Selected Collection: Botanical Drawings by Alfred Riocreux.
Apart from the aesthetic and beautifully detailed illustration style, I chose this set because it reminds me of colouring books and encyclopaedias I had when I was a kid.
What are the different components?
1. Flowers, branches, and leaves
2. Names of the plants
3. Matting of the drawings
4. Coloured in illustrations
5. Some are line drawings
How are they similar?
1. Watercolour based
2. Leaves are of similar shades of green
3. Centered on the page
4. Certain flowers share the same colour
5. No background and they all seem to be floating
6. Names of the plant are written at the bottom left corner
7. They are all similar proportions on the page
8. All pages are beige/ off-white in colour
How are they different?
1. Shapes of leaves and flowers
2. Sizes of the different components of each plant
3. Flowers vary in colours
4. They are drawn with different movements
5. Different names
6. Vary in textures
How are they held together, both formally and conceptually?
1. They are all held in a book together
2. Follows the same page layout and each page is conceptually the same
3. They all share the same purpose
4. They are also held together by their illustration style
5. Conceptually it also reminds me of a Botanical Garden
How is your understanding of each component shaped by its relationship to the other parts in the set?
I’m not sure how each component relates to each other apart from the fact they belong to the same category of plants and that their illustration styles are the same.
What patterns are visible across the set?
1. They all seem to be floating on the page, it is a recurring pattern.
2. One botanical illustration per page.
3. The similar layout of each page forms a pattern too.
How is it presented, circulated, or accessed?
It is presented in a book format that can be accessed online and physically in the library.
Experiments:
1. Sorting and classifying based on colour.
2. Exaggerating/ Recontextualising – Neon Effect to make it look like a Cyan print
3. Exaggerating/ Recontextualising – Glowing Edges – focusing on the outlines
4. Adding/ Subtracting – Removing all the flowers and focusing on the leaves
5. Adding/ Subtracting – Removing all the colour and focusing on the lines
6. Recontextualising – Grayscale version of the illustrations
Reflection on initial feedback:
• Find more ways it could be curated and sorted.
• Find value/ purpose/ context from the experiments already done.
• The Neon and Glowing Edges effect removes details of the plants, focusing more on the form and shape rather than its identity.
• Explore the movement of each plant in the form of gestures.
• Think of how the experiments help you have a new understanding of the collection. Are you creating new subjects from these experiments?
• The silhouettes create shapes that unfamiliarises the original collection. What else could they represent?
• “Outcomes that pose questions, not solve problems.”