May 06, 2018

Simple Botanical Drawings

May 06, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and other Plants by Lee J. Ames with P. Lee Ames. Available from Internet Archive here.

The drawing diagrams in this book are not at the level of botanical prints but they are a start toward producing plant drawings. If I wanted to create botanical prints, I would quickly graduate to drawing from fresh plant models. For now, I am taking a different direction - using the instruction diagrams as starters for upcoming Zentangles where it is OK for the drawing to not look realistic in the end!

My two favorites are the instructional pages for producing drawings of Skunk Cabbage and a Calla Lilly. These are the one I’ll experiment with first.

February 06, 2018

Gartenflora

February 06, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Eduard Regel started the illustrated botanical magazine Gartenflora in 1852. He served at its editor until 1885 but it continued to be published until 1940. Internet Archive has over 50 of them available (link to the list here). The text is in German…but the illustrations are the draw for me anyway. I’ve include a sample image from each of magazine’s I looked at back in 2013.

January 29, 2018

Paxton’s Magazine of Botany

January 29, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The Internet Archive has 10+ issues of Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants published from the mid-1830s into the 1840s. Sir Joseph Paxton was the publisher; he is also known for cultivating Cavendish bananas and designing the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The list of links for the volumes available can be found here. Beyond the botanical prints, the issues also are good examples of what was happening with plants during that time. I enjoyed them back in 2013 and include a sample image from the volumes here.

January 28, 2018

Asa Gray and Trees

January 28, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The plates from Asa Gray’s Forest Trees of North America are among my favorite botanical prints. They were produced in the mid-1800s for a report and are works of art. They appeal to me for their beauty and their true-to-life accuracy. Most of them are trees I know and appreciate in Maryland….although the last one in the volume – labelled as a ‘dogwood’ is not the tree that we commonly have in our area by that name. I looked it up on Wikipedia with the genus/species name and found that its common name is green osier, alternate-leaved dogwood, and pagoda dogwood…and it isn’t native to the part of Maryland where I live; it does grow in far western Maryland, however.

January 25, 2018

Wild flowers of North America (Buek)

January 25, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Back in 2014, I discovered the multi-volume set of Wild flowers of America produced via subscription by G.H. Buek & Co. in the mid-1890s available on Internet Archive; find them all using this search and enjoy the colorful illustrations. A sample image from each volume is shown below.

January 21, 2018

Charles Flahault

January 21, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Back in 2015, I browsed 2 volumes of Charles Flahault’s Nouvelle flore coloriée de poche des Alpes et des Pyrénées (the 1st and 3rd ) and I wondered what had happened to the 2nd volume since I usually look at a full series once I get started. Evidently the 2nd volume was not scanned and made available on Internet Archive until January 2017! So, I recently enjoyed that 2nd volume. What a treat on a cold winter’s day! The three sample images are below. The links to the volumes are Internet Archive are: one, two, three. All three volumes were published in 1906.

January 18, 2018

Orchids of Britain and Ireland

January 18, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Some books on Internet Archive are relatively recent publication. Orchids of Britain and Ireland by Anne and Simon Harrap was published in 2009 and is available on the Internet Archive. There are lush photos of orchids throughout.

27d 16 10.jpg — As I write this, there is snow on the ground and the temperature is still in the teens. I’m enjoying paging through this book with the pages filling my monitor - being an armchair naturalist.

January 18, 2018

The Flowering Plants of South Africa

January 18, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

One of the more substantial series I found and browsed in 2016 was the 20+ volumes of The Flowering Plants of South Africa available from Internet Archive. They were published almost annually between 1921 and 1951…with wonderful illustrations as demonstrated by the sample images in the display below. A link to each of the volumes can be found below the group of images. Each volume includes many botanical prints. Enjoy!