Color Gamuts in Botanical Illustration

Mervi Hjelmroos-Koski, Ph.D., D. Sc., Manager of The School of Botanical Art & Illustration in Denver, Colorado, recently gave her students an assignment to do a realistic botanical rendering as a way to understand color gamuts.

Mervi says: 

"We recently completed an advanced level workshop which followed James Gurney's book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter focusing on a botanical subject matter. The students learned about gamut mapping and limited palettes and found it to be extremely helpful in botanical work." 

"The class was very successful and several of the students even suggested that it should be a class within the required curriculum."

 "In the upper image no blue color was used - the lower image shows the same subject matter but without any yellow and blue added."

 Randy Raak was the instructor and the students used colored pencil.

 Please see more images from this course in addition to some other classroom shots by clicking here.