STORY BEHIND THE ART OF Diane Harm

25th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Wave Hill

Beautiful White Birds

Strelitzia nicolai



Since moving full time to Florida in 2016, I have been fascinated by the bold, sometimes flamboyant plants and birds of the tropics and subtropics. I find most of my subjects close to home, or on my morning walks, or in my garden.

This specimen of a white bird of paradise was in the backyard of a vacation rental on Captiva Island. The combination of the mid-afternoon light, the huge, graceful curves of the leaves, and spiky new and old flowers captured my attention. Because of the size of the plant, 20-30 feet tall, I had to work from field notes and photographs when drawing this piece.

For the last several years, I have worked almost exclusively in colored pencil. For this artwork, I added a dark background with pan pastels to better showcase my extraordinary specimen.

Because colored pencil is so time consuming, though somewhat meditative, I have been experimenting with pan pastels for the backgrounds. The plant is the fun part, but the backgrounds can get very boring. The pan pastel goes on very smoothly and quickly with special foam applicators and if the pastel is not put on too heavily around fine details like the spiky parts, the light colored pencils can be used to clean the edges over the pastel. The pan pastels produce very little pastel dust; they seem to grip the paper, thus avoiding the framing problems that occur with soft pastels. They can also be used over colored pencil for a soft misty look. I used them over the leaves for the faint horizontal stripes.

Next Story

Back to List