Sketches of New Zealand Orchids

Botanical illustration is a nice mix of art and science and it is a good way to get to know a plant well, for to depict its details accurately you have to observe them accurately.

Seeing is knowing.

In some ways an artist can do what a photographer cannot je. show in detail the points that separate a plant from its kin. The downside is the temptation to exaggerate those points of difference in the image.

But detailed drawing is young peoples’ work: dissecting a tiny flower under the microscope, boking at it hard and then transferring the mental image onto paper requires either an ability to see things close up-a faculty we lose increasingly after the mid 40s-or a fumbling change of glasses each time we shift our focus from the evepiece to the paper.

It was time, I thought, to collect some of my old orchid drawings together in one place. Many have been published in the NZ Native Orchid Joumaland early Field Guides. They are now in the public domain so please feel free to pass this little book on. 

I hope they will be of use to others and most of all I hope they will stimulate some to draw these beautiful things better than I have. 

This was first published electronically in October 2022 as No. 22 in the New Zealand Native Orchid Group’s Histoncal Senes, as a supplement to The NZ Native Orchid Joumal no. 167: ISSN 1177-4401.