This two day workshop will give you the chance to draw and paint some of the beautiful and diverse grasses and sedges that grow in the Botanic Garden’s collection.  You’ll get to learn a bit about these plants, and have the chance to examine and draw them in detail. Day one will focus on grasses with some information on grass anatomy and variety, then we’ll be drawing several different species that we’ll gather from the gardens, and looking at their flowers and seeds up close. After, we’ll get down to work on a watercolour painting of one or several of these plants. Day two is the turn of the sedges, with a brief overview of the anatomy of this family, followed by the chance to collect and draw sedges from the gardens. After examining these plants and doing line drawings, we’ll work up a finished illustration of one or more sedges, possibly alongside some species of grass. We’ll touch on the rush family in passing, and hopefully by the course end you’ll have a basic grasp of these fascinating families, and have had the chance to focus on illustrating them.

Suitable for intermediates; some experience of using watercolours required.

Lizzie Harper is a free-lance natural history and botanical illustrator working in watercolour, pencil, and pen. She’s the illustrator of “The Hedgerow Handbook” and “Foraging with Kids, and her work is in “The Bumper Book of Nature “ and HarperCollins Flower Guide.  She has also worked on flower identification charts for Field Studies Council, and illustrations for the Welsh Botanic Gardens. She works in her garden studio in Hay on Wye where she lives happily with a long-suffering husband and two lively children.