Home Grown Talent at SCIE – Shenzhen College of International Education

Walking through the SCIE campus early on a January morning, those with particularly good vision would have spotted, dotted amongst the greenery, not just our usual campus flora, but the heads of our G1 Art students deep in concentration. For the Art department Wednesday was no ordinary morning, and so instead of their usual classroom set-up, students brought their pencils and sketch books to draw ‘en plein air’.

Students study the flora by the stream

For artists, the opportunity to draw from observation in a natural environment is particularly valuable, and for the next few weeks these artists are working as botanical illustrators, studying and depicting the local flora (plant life) to create an illustrated watercolour outcome. Students were tasked with finding an interesting plant to investigate and creating drawings to help them record as much information as they could about it. As well as the traditional aesthetic principles of composition, line, texture and tone, our artists needed to focus on the identifying features, visible structures, textures and habitats of their plants.

Focusing on the detail, students study the Zanthoxylum fagara.

By spending time studying their plants carefully , taking photos and creating drawings, students were able to stop and consider the details, experience their environment and understand much more about heir subjects than they could from photographs and second-hand sources. They also made use of plant identifying apps to discover the names and important information about their subjects.

Students produced a range of beautiful drawings, and several agreed that they had been amazed to discover the intricacies of the plants they studied, and how much you could find out from observing nature. Once the drawings were completed, students also took their own photographs as primary sources to aid their final works. Look out for their exhibition of final pieces coming up either in person or online after the Chinese new year!