Sennelier, M. Graham, and Winsor & Newton Artists’ Grade watercolors on a 14in-by-20in Arches cold-pressed block, 140lb/300gsm. Based on a stock image floating around the Internet. A challenge through and through.

After years of endlessly gazing at vintage books of botanical illustration, this December I decided (quite recklessly) to make my own. I haven’t painted in maybe five years, and even then I was doing B&W and impressionistic portraits. Botanical illustration has had me reading up on color, among others. WetCanvas has been an amazing resource, and not a day has passed since I discovered this site that I didn’t come here for a visit. Odd to start a painting as one kind of painter, and to end it as another. That is: Because this took around two to three weeks for me to do, and was made in tandem with me studying pigments and applications and paper weights and brush gliding and so on and so on, it really does feel like I made the first leaf one way and the last leaf a completely different way. (Should explain why the leaves may not look like they belong to one plant, haha.) It was fascinating to so actively learn as I go along, even if it was daunting in such a big piece (my biggest yet!), and I’m excited to move on to a new painting and start figuring things out all over again.

My apologies for such a wordy description; I think I’m trying to cram in it my gratitude for this community, too, as well as an introduction. This has only been my third post, and that’s after weeks of reading threads to “100 pages back” and rereading quite a lot of them. Thank you, everyone, and Happy New Year!