This three day course provides the opportunity to draw and illustrate items that might include the strangely shaped Magnolia pods with brightly coloured seeds, Allium heads, feathery thistle heads, tousle headed Cardoons or prickly Teasels. Some of the exotic trees in the Garden will provide us with unusual seed heads, such as the maroon beans of the Gleditsia tricanthos, or large pine cones from the arboretum. The Tropical Glasshouse will also have a range of strange and beautiful fruit and seed pods to paint, such as the Lotus flower, or spiky fruit of the Canna and Caster Oil plant. Time will be taken to choose a suitable subject for each participant. Careful observation and accuracy will be needed and the tutor will take you through the various stages of painting to achieve a smooth watercolour wash. This will be through a combination of group demonstration but mainly through individual tuition.

The three days should give participants time to hopefully complete or be well on the way with a plant portrait , that is unusual and unique to the artist.

The course is suitable for all levels.

Reinhild is a qualified teacher as well as an experienced Botanical Artist. She has illustrated wild flowers in various parts of the world from Kazakhstan to the Alps to Africa. She did a series on flowers of the equatorial rain forests in Tanzania which led onto a monograph on the genus Saintpaulia. She received her first of four gold medals from the RHS for this set of paintings.  Reinhild regularly holds major exhibitions of her work in London and Bury St Edmunds, and many of her illustrations are housed at Kew in their permanent collection.