This book is helpful enough that I needed a second dose a few years after I first read it and followed half of the tutorials. Maybe because this was my first botanical drawing book, I see it as the most useful. Ann Swan is great at detailing techniques, tools, and having good examples to work from. I've drawn flowers, leaves, and fruit. I've practiced burnishing, solvents, and embossing. Two years ago I had student grade materials, and now I have the Polychromos pencils recommended in the book. Suddenly I can almost get lifelike (as long as the paper is at least an arm's length away, but I'm getting there!). Examples are large enough to not strain the eyes and come with enough text to execute techniques properly--more than what I can say about many other books I've tried. I'm more fond of the two year journey I've made with my two work-throughs of this book than my efforts in any other art book, YouTube channel, or other learning projects. It's my special book. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. Well thought out and laid-out; beautiful illustrations and printing and really practical instructions about techniques.
Coloured pencils tends to be looked down on by water colour artists but when I showed some of the illustrations in this book to some fellow water-colourists...they were highly impressed. One had already tried coloured pencil drawing of botanical subjects and made the comment that it was hard work....her arm was sore after a day spent pressing heavily and embossing to get the desired effects. I've tried some coloured pencil work and it's great for getting very fine details and for the control it gives but I'm afraid my efforts paled into insignificance compared with Ann Swan's work.
She approaches the subject in the standard way: Materials, colours, techniques such as erasing, embossing, working from dark to light, using solvents ....then moving on to actual worked examples with a time sequence of pictures (I found this really helpful) ...then a gallery and finally some hints about cleaning up the works and presentation. All in all a useful and helpful book. Five stars from me. ( )

This book is not for beginners. The author assumes that you know how to draw as well as how to use colored pencils. You need to be a high achieving intermediate colored pencil artist or an advanced one before taking on botanicals. The first thing that the author teaches the reader is the need to know the scientific structure of the plant that you are drawing. How does it grow? How is is constructed? How are the leaves on the stem arranged? You need to study the pattern of the veins on the leaves, all of them, as no two leaves are alike. In addition, the artist needs to study toe life cycle of the plant, taking measurements of each part of the plant as it grows or changes. It seems to me that the artist needs to buy a botany book on the plant before getting started as there is so much scientific information needed before you can start your drawing.

The author recommends using a small sketchbook to record details about the plant's growing habits as well as making a series of thumbnail sketches of the flowers, stems, roots, leaves and buds. She also recommends taking a series of photographs to use as a reference for our drawing.

One fact that I learned from the book is that botanical drawings are always life-size. That is why you need to take measurements of the plant in the planning stages of your drawing. Also, Ms. Swan shows the reader how to use the Divine Proportion, which occurs in nature everywhere, when planning the composition of a drawing so that it is aesthetically pleasing. I also learned that there are 3 styles in botanical illustration. There is the traditional style which was the only style that I was aware of, the contemporary style where the focus is just on one part of the plant and the abstract style where one part of the plant is enlarged and it's the only part of the plant that is drawn.

The author also includes great tips on which colors to use when shading leaves in the foreground versus shading in the background as well as how to develop a critical eye toward the style and elements in your drawing. The latter half of the book consists of how-to demonstrations of various plant subjects. Ms. Swan primarily uses Polychromos pencils but will also use Luminance and Prismacolor for blending. I was surprised that she did not use the Luminance pencils more often since they are 100% lightfast but the colors they come in are not suited for botanical drawings.

Botanical Portraits is a wonderful addition to the colored pencil instruction books. It is quite unique from the rest since botanical art requires a different skillset. It is also unique as a botanical instruction book because the author only uses colored pencils in her drawings. Other botanical artists only use colored pencils to highlight areas. As a colored pencil artist I find it exciting that someone is showing a new way to do botanicals. ( )