Recently we (Myrokan blog) had this opportunity
to visit the world most renowned botanical garden that also known as Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew Gardens is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the
world that also played many important roles in introducing specimens of plant
and trees to many other countries such as rubber and tea. Kew Gardens not only keep
living specimens of plants, but also dried specimens, seeds and DNA, libraries,
illustrations and many other records related to plants. That’s what makes Kew
Gardens one of the most important places that we visited in London.
Kew Garden founded in 1840 in the area that
originally was the exotic garden at Kew Park. That park itself had been
enlarged several times with the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew
in 1772. Within this area many garden structures had been built and some of
them still remain until today.
The pond right in front of the Museum no 1.
The temperate house just been reopened two days earlier.
Well, there are so many things happened back
there, but here we want to see other important things that we still can see at
Kew Gardens and other activities related to it - that will give benefits to us
and the future generations. Even though they have only taken care of plants,
but the further study of these plants is actually for human benefits such as
for agriculture, medicine, farming, cloning, seed bank, references, cataloguing
and you can check more on their website – included at the end of this article.
Knowing more about Kew Gardens is important before
you plan to visit it (well, no one can ever visit the whole of the areas within
one day – so you must know which areas that important to you, or you can visit
it several times). Maybe the best way to do it by asking these few questions;
Are you just want to see the plants in Kew
Gardens?
Are you interested to know how Kew Gardens
keep the specimens of the plants and trees?
Are you interested to know the history of Kew
Gardens and their buildings (such as their glass houses, their garden structures,
bridges, canopy walk, cottage, palaces and many other buildings in Kew
Gardens)?
Are you interested to know more about the
activities conducted here in Kew Gardens?
Are you interested to participate in
activities conducted by Kew Gardens (exhibitions or scientific activities) in
their vicinity or online?
Where you can find the map of the whole area?
How you are going to explore the area?
Time of opening, as the time will change
according to the seasons.
How you can contact Kew Gardens in order to
get more information in case you need some help?
The Palm House another important glass house with huge size.
The tropical plants and trees can live vigorously inside this glass house.
It might hard for us to see this plant in their own natural habitat.
There are many other questions you can ask during
the preparation to visit Kew Gardens. By identifying your priorities you will
save lots of time and you will know exactly where to look at during your visit.
Even though I managed to see what I want during my visit, I still missed a few
things - I think I could improve it if I plan it properly. The other reason is,
there are too many things to see.
The best thing was, during my visit the Temperate
House has just reopened two days earlier. I also joined the tour guide that
explaining more details about the history, the process of restoration that cost
around £41 million and take a look at the Temperate House itself. It was closed
for the past 5 years for the restoration process. There are many interesting things
about this building that we should talk about it separately – hopefully I will
get a chance to do it.
The Temperate House not only important for its functions but also for its architecture.
The plants and trees had been relocated back into the Temperate House.
Kew Palace, another important building in Kew Gardens.
Flowers of plant at the Queen’s Garden.
Flowers of plant at the Queen’s Garden.
There are few more glass houses in Kew Gardens
includes Palm House, Waterlilly House, Princess of Wales Conservatory and
Davies Alpine House. All of the glass houses, housing different types of plants
- so please try not to miss it. You can use optional transports in the gardens
either bicycle or electric train to help you travelling around. I used the electric
train and still I missed few!
Here in this article I shared a few photos during
my visit. If you want to see more photos you can visit our fanpage
where I posted more photos. I hope it will help others who unable to visit to
Kew yet to see how it look like and to get the general ideas of what Kew
Gardens is.
The Princess of Wales Conservatory glass house.
Orchids of tropical planted in this glass house.
Another beautiful tropical plant’s flower.
Another beautiful view of the pillar’s covered with tropical plants.
You can see different types of plants in the same glass house.
Carnivorous plant specimens, is one of important plants that I want to see here in Kew Gardens.
Besides visiting Kew Gardens physically, you
still can learn more about it or get involved with their activities online. Check
their websites to learn more about their activities. You can easily get in
touch with them to know more about any activities that you can get involved
with. So this is the link to Kew Gardens’
website.
There are many other things I would like to
share about the details in each area of Kew Gardens, perhaps I can do it soon. Before
that, you can ask me if there is any question - don’t forget to see the photos
that I posted on my fanpage
to get more ideas about Kew Gardens.
There are limitless of result you can achieve with coloured pencil technique. - Photo by: Morgan Davidson
Time to move on to the next stage of our drawing exercises. Here you can choose the colouring techniques that you like. Anyway, since the coloured pencils technique has been the basic in colour – you should at least try it, even if you don’t want to make it your professional fields. With coloured pencils technique, it will be easier for you to understand any other colouring techniques such as watercolour, oil, acrylic and etc.
Here I only can show you the basic things you need to know with this technique, it’s either you can follow the free tutorial courses from the YouTube or you can enrol in any online courses to get greater results. There are countless result, you can achieve with any techniques as long as you keep on learning. In fact, you can also try the mix media techniques using colour pencil.
Tools
To start this technique all you need to have is the colour pencil sets. There are few sets of colour pencil that consist of 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 132, and 150 (the amount of colour pencils also can be different with different brands).
For the start you can have the smaller sets of colours on 12 or 24. At the earlier stage what you need to know is the techniques instead of the result of your painting. The other reason is, you want to know which brand is good for you. You don’t want to buy a complete set and after that found that the other brand in much better.
You can start with basic coloured pencils set. - Photo by: mymodernmet.com
Colouring Techniques
There are similarity of colour technique with colour pencils and the shading process with a regular pencil. That’s why, starting with colour pencil will be the easy step to start for the colouring process before your shift into any other colouring techniques.
There are some strokes you need to learn when using the colour pencils. Strokes will give different textures to your result. Other important skills with coloured pencils is the colour blending. The colour blending will give you extra shades of colours instead the total colour that you have on your colour set. The other thing is mixing colours with coloured pencils is different with the mixing colour with watercolour and oil paintings.
In order to master this technique you need to get enough exercise to get a good result. Then you also need to know that different brand of coloured pencils going to give you different effects. In order to speed up your learning, it is better if you are following any classes so you can get a proper guide and discussion.
Here we are going to see some samples of colouring techniques with coloured pencils. What you need to remember, you need to first master the basic techniques before you can come out with a very good result. Keep on practicing, keep on exploring different techniques in order to produce a better result.
You can keep on searching relevant tutorial videos or even follows the related channels to make sure that you always learning something new.
You
need to keep on exercising in order to get stunning results like this painting
by Néstor Canavarro. – Photo by: Néstor Canavarro
Online Classes
Or you can simple follow an online classes. With online classes you will be able to interact with others or your trainer in more details about your works. Plan properly, so you can dedicate enough time if you decide to invest in online courses.
You can also have your painting group where you can work together in order to improve your paintings result. For example, you can follow an online classes through this website drawpj.com, but there are many other online classes you can find all over the internet.
Look how beautiful is the result of coloured pencil techniques. - Photo from: drawpj.com
Keep on practicing in order to get a better result. - Photo by: Morgan Davidson
Coloured pencil is the most basic technique. Even though it’s not popular as watercolour, oils or acrylic, coloured pencils can provide you with better ideas of other colouring techniques. You also will find many good paintings produced with coloured pencil techniques. Keep on exploring and always keep on learning.
We talked about the drawing exercises yesterday, and today we are going to talk about the tools. To
start your drawing lessons, you don’t need to have too many tools actually. These
tools anyway, will grows together with your skills. So, don’t rush to get all the
tools at the same time, but buy it only when you are ready to use it.
The Basic Tools
These three things are the only things you need
as a start. For the first few exercises you don’t have to use too many tools.
Once you realize that you need to move on to the next stage, then you can add
your tools (such as for details shading exercises).
Pencil (you can start with one - better if you
have H, HB, and 2B)
You don’t have to use too many pencils for basic exercises. - Photo by: vickerey.com
You can also use the mechanical pencils, but the best start is with regular pencils. - Photo by: cassart.co.uk
Paper (for basic practice you can do it on any
paper - regular A4 paper is cheaper for practice)
Eraser (make sure you have a nice clean rubber
eraser).
The good quality eraser will leave you a clean surface. - Photo by: skout.com.au
Ruler (this is to draw the guidelines when you
do the perspective exercises)
The transparent ruler will enable you to see what’s underneath it. - Photo by: hobbycraft.co.uk
For the first few lessons such as drawing basic
shapes, lines, perspectives, and basic human & animal shapes and also
composition all the tools above are enough. Focus on the result you want to
achieve on the exercises (at this stage, the shapes and quality of lines are
more important than the shading). So, don’t worry about your tools.
Other additional tools such as storage case or
files to keep your drawing – to see your progress. You need to make sure your
progress to understand the different between all the exercises. It’s also important
for you to check on your progress (make sure there’s improvement in your
exercises.
Now you know that to start your drawing
exercises, you don’t have to spend too much on tools, and it’s more about your
own passion to try something new. Always get yourself inspired with new drawing
you want to try, but don’t get too hard on yourself as you’re just beginning
your lesson. Give yourself enough time. So, get advice from someone who you know
how to draw.
Good drawing requires few basic skills. - Photo by: drawingartpic.com
Everyone has the ability to draw whether it is good or not. Such as any other skill, drawing quality will improve with repetitive training. This process anyway can be shortened with talent and proper training. So, if you are interested in drawing, one thing that you need to put in mind - find a good training program and keep on learning.
Drawing
Drawing is an important skill in many fields. Whether you truly want to be an artist, or you want to be a biologist or scientist – the drawing skills really going to help you a lot. Even for house builders, basic drawing skill helps them to materialize their ideas easily.
If you are talented in drawing, then the process will be much easier. Anyway, learning of the basic drawing skills is still required in order to improve your result. There are few skills in drawing to make sure you can produce the greatest result as you want it.
Basic drawing skills:
Drawing lines need to be trained properly to get a good result. - Photo by: bikersshop.info
Drawing of shapes
The first step in drawing is the ability to draw shapes. This practice actually will help you to control your hand to produce the same thing that you want to draw from your mind. By drawing the simple shapes such as circle, square, ellipse, triangle, and long straight line, you can tell the amount of pressure that you need to apply and how to move your hand correctly. This exercise will get easier after some period of times, until you find that it is not a problem at all.
After that you can go to the next step with 3D objects such as cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, triangular pyramid, square pyramid, triangular prism, and torus. Learn how to use the construction lines to make sure you get the shapes correct. Then you can go to the next step of shading by adding the direction of light source. This is the fun part of learning basic drawing.
Drawing basic shapes to help you get it everything in the right proportion. - Photo by: fun-stuff-to-do.com
This exercise can be upgraded by experimenting with different materials such as coarse surface, for example a brick instead of just regular cube. So you can see the different shades of light on the surface. How about when you put few shapes closer, how the light will look like on each surface.
Draw in perspective
This is another important basic skills in drawing. Perspective will give the depth in your drawing. It also will help you understand how to draw objects that are closer and the objects that are further. There are a few important steps in this exercise.
By mastering these basic skills you are ready to draw a panorama view. Is also helps if you’re drawing multiple object with consideration of space and depth, for example, large room with furniture, windows and door.
Drawing Human and Animals
Basic drawing of the head (for manga character). - Photo by: moziru.com
The next step you can start to learn how to draw human and animals. You can start this part earlier before you learn the perspective drawing. It’s depend on what is your goals are. If you want to draw a portrait as your main subject than you can skip the perspective drawing. But still, you need to learn the perspective in order to master all the basic techniques in drawing to improving your skills.
Drawing human and animals have their similarities. Here you need to use your skills in drawing the basic objects a lot. You are going to use many construction lines, drawing basic shapes such as round, circular lines, straight lines and many others. That’s why you need to keep on practicing in order to have proper control of your tools – and how to use the right pressure for different types of lines.
Composition
The right composition will make your drawing more appealing. - Photo by: watercolorpainting.com
Composition is an important element to make sure that your drawing will give an impact to your viewers. Good drawing skills alone will not be enough to get a good result without correct composition. It’s allow your viewer to catch the right message on your drawings.
Composition is not hard to understand, but you need to train yourself properly in order to get it right. Once you get used to it, usually it will be naturally get into your drawings. All of these elements usually will be explained in most of basic drawing classes.
Keep on practicing
Keep on practicing will help you to fasten the process of drawing. You will know when to remove some guidelines as you can imagine where it will be. Don’t do this at an early stage as it will make you unable to grasp the technique properly.
Keep on doing the same practice as shown on your exercises. Try different characters, shapes, scenes and try your own imagination. You might someday draw with your own styles, but let it happen naturally. Sometimes you will notice it when you are in a hurry – but don’t rush it.
