C APTURING
P LANTS
by Erin Caro Aguayo
T
here is no shortage of art in the
Big Bend. A tour of the many
local galleries and makeshift display
spaces reveals every possible use of
color, composition and inspiration.
Scattered like quiet seeds among the
many noted and aspiring painters and
photographers of the Big Bend, how-
ever, there is a different type of artist.
These are the region’s botanical illus-
trators, technical draftsmen with cre-
ative backgrounds who express their
love of desert flora by reproducing it
in meticulous detail.
ON
P APER
S CIENCE M EETS A RT
Patty Manning has spent the last 13
years working for Sul Ross State
University as an environmental sci-
ence technician – she is the skilled
hand responsible for maintaining the
university’s greenhouses, vineyard and
cactus garden. She came out to Sul
Ross to study for her master’s in biolo-
gy, bringing with her a bachelor’s in
fine-arts drawing and painting and a
master’s in printmaking.
She began applying her artistic
skills to her scientific studies when
Dr. A. Michael Powell approached her
about illustrating
a book he was
writing – Grasses of
the Trans-Pecos and
Adjacent Areas (1994,
2nd ed. 2000, Iron
Mountain
Press).
Although she admits
that she didn’t know
much about desert
grasses at the time,
she “was generally
interested in the
desert flora and
fauna” and found
that “being outside
and seeing the
plants” piqued her
interest. Illustrating
dried specimens that
she had seen in the
field took her under-
standing even fur-
ther. “Seeing them
under a microscope
– that opens up a
whole new world.
Patricia Manning,Torrey yucca or Spanish dagger, Yucca torreyi
All the hairs and
8
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2009
bumps...all the tiny dif-
ferences that distin-
guish it from another
plant.”
Patty created 70
illustrations for the
book by studying the
techniques used by
another prominent
botanical illustrator,
C. Leo Hitchcock, and
through careful prac-
tice drawing speci-
mens from the Sul
Ross herbarium. “A
person who has had
the (artistic) training is
at an advantage.
Learning how to use
your pen and control
the way you use the
pen and use the ink,
that sort of thing takes
a lot of practice.” She
describes illustration as
“a new language with
Petei Guth,Widow’s Tears, Commelina dianthifolia
a whole new set of
descriptors,” and says
have to know what a representative of
“since I didn’t know anything about
that species would be and not get hung
the subject, I give credit to Dr. Powell
up on drawing a portrait of that indi-
for being able to describe to me, very
vidual entity.” She explains that “every
patiently, what I needed to emphasize
now and then you have an oddball,”
in a drawing.”
which could be problematic. “If a
Unlike more free-form types of art,
plant guide featured an illustration of
botanical illustrators often strive to
four-leafed clovers or two-leafed poi-
make their final drawing as typical of a
son ivy, your average hiker could be set
species as possible, so they must be able
up for disappointment, or worse.”
to recognize if the subject in front of
She describes her work with
them is normal or not. “You’re not
concise, simple modesty. “If you can
drawing a portrait of a particular
draw what you see, and if you can
plant,” Manning says. “You’re trying
know what characters are important
to show representative characters for
to illustrate, then you can be a good
that species. There may be a range of
illustrator.”
quantifiers within that species, and you