Botanical Sketchbook || Mary Ann Scott with Margaret Stevens

This is an intriguing guide to painting flowers and plants from the perspective of someone who is following a defined course (the Society of Botanical Artists’ Distance Learning Course). On the face of it, you’d be inclined to be sceptical: can you really learn anything by watching someone else learn; isn’t that idea the very definition of an oxymoron?

Without the capable hands of Margaret Stevens and the SBA, I’d say it probably was. The other thing that has to be said is that Mary Ann Scott, the learner, is a capable artist who, at the beginning, is clearly not short of ability and so we’re not subjected to 80-odd pages of not-very-good exercises while she gets her hand in. It’s possible to see the progression, but every illustration is something you’d be pretty pleased to have done yourself and that’s the book’s secret, the reason why you learn along with Mary Ann. The sketchbook of the title is the record of her work towards the Society’s Diploma.

This is a well thought-out and well structured book that doesn’t just explain the process of botanical painting, but also the process of learning it.

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