New book is published!
Nuphar lutea – new book by Niki Simpson
I am delighted to report that on 25th May 2016 my new book was published!!
Nuphar lutea – botanical images for the digital documentation of a taxon
The ISBN number is: 978-0-9554917-1-9
If you are interested in purchasing a copy or have questions about it please email me – though I hope to make it available directly through Amazon shortly – in fact just as soon as I’ve worked out how to do that! It’s all been quite a steep learning curve…
The book’s large square format (30 x 30 cm) pushes the price up but it does mean that the main plates can be shown at A4 in size, whether they are landscape or portrait in orientation, so the details of the illustrations can be seen. It is a hardback, coffee-table style, book printed on premium matte paper. Here are just two double page spreads from it to give you an idea of what is inside…
As well as the main composite illustration (above right), there are 11 other main plates, which consider aspects such as the vegetative characters and foliage parts. One plate focuses purely on floral structure and I explain how I created a floral diagram for my particular plant, and which is included within the illustration on floral structure, together with a floral formula. In a further plate I consider how best to include DNA sequence data to bring these illustrations up to date in line with current molecular research. In addition to these main plates, there are 12 smaller illustrations.
The book contains a variety of visual narratives and timeline sequences, and also photographs and explanation of the herbarium voucher specimens I made from the plant. Also included is a black and white digital line art illustration followed by a new type of digital hybrid botanical illustration which I explain and demonstrate. All of the main illustrations are fully explained.
So, although it is about, and printed from, my digital illustrations, much of the content may be of interest to botanical painters as well as digital illustrators, and it will be especially relevant to those interested in the future of botanical art and scientific natural history illustration in particular.