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I love studying the plant and deciding how best to get all the parts drawn to "tell a story" with the bud/flower/fruit/cross-section/bark and leaves.  I learned Classic Botanical Illustration in Scotland at the RBGE after I had already been playing with watercolours for 20 years with a wet-on-wet style portrayal of fishes and tropical life when living in Hawaii.  The washy-watery affect is what I love about watercolours but to make my paintings more "professional" I felt I needed more, some instruction, some way to create work that I felt good about putting a price on, proud of.

I have gone very detailed with my works from that time of study in Scotland but I never "felt" the flow, the plant coming ALIVE with such a tight detailed amount of time on the works so I am pleased to be able to loosen my grip again as I have over the past 6.5 years however I do feel my last work was a bit too tight again.  Maybe it was the way the plant is itself, with so much detail, but for this piece I'm back to loosening up a bit but I just can't seem to help myself when it comes to showing some details!  The flowers will be very detailed and the bark and leaves will be a bit more washy, the fruit will be detailed and some of the rough outside rind of the fruits too but some more washy than others.  I'd like to get into "blurring" the edges of some areas too.  Every piece I do is a further experiment from the last, never settling "right where I am" as an artist. 

Not only does my exploratory mindset infiltrate my life with travel, but it infuses my artistic creations also!

Work in progress...a human becoming!