Painting in Menindee, September 2013

Our time in the wonderful Big Sky Country of Menindee and Kinchega National Park has come and gone.

Menindee Civic Hall

Ten botanic artists, one botanist and our fabulous support crew (of one!) gathered in the Civic Hall in Menindee.

From there we went out into the local area to find the plants that were on Hermann Beckler's original list.
(Click here for the background to our project.)

Back in the Hall we would work on our paintings. This involved getting to know the plants in detail. We used microscopes to explore the intricate worlds of seeds, reproductive parts and leaf surfaces.

Working in the Hall

Many artists drew enlargements of those dissections to include on their finished paintings. We created detailed drawings of our plants. While we were preparing this visual information we were conscious of the composition of the final painting. decisions had to be made about where to place the microscopic drawings, how to show the habit of the plant and which parts of the plant were vital for identification.

Drawing from live specimens means a race against time before the plant wilts and dies. Sometimes the angle of a leaf will change or a seed head will continue to develop. Reference photos become really important.

We investigated a number of options for keeping our specimens alive. The chip bucket was handy.....




















..... until Valerie discovered that the take away coffee container was even better!

Over the coming months there will be posts on this blog from individual artists, talking about their plants, their paintings and why they have travelled so far from home to be involved in the Project.

Also there will be a post about the town of Menindee. So thank you to the people who live here, who welcome us each year. People recognise us in the street and pub now. Some come into the Hall to see what we are doing and tell us stories about the area.

But our adventure up here would be very different without the help of Margot, Bruce and Lorraine. So an extra big thank you to them. They provide us with plants, information, assistance and resources -- invaluable support that we could not provide ourselves.