A G REEN T HUMB
FOR C REATIVITY
Petei Guth is a busy woman. While
she manages the Hallmark apartments
in Alpine by day, her free time leads
her to hand-paint canvases for needle-
point, design jewelry, take photo-
graphs, bind books, weave, lead hikes
for the Sierra Club and write poetry
about the natural world around her.
Among other things. She credits her
varied interests to being a Gemini, a
sign which she says represents people
who love to try to learn about as many
different things as possible.
Astrologically preordained or not,
Petei’s desire to explore led her to
botanical illustration. “It’s something I
always wanted to do, and I never
thought I’d have the opportunity. I’m
an artist, but I’m not a botanist.” That
didn’t stop her from collecting and
mounting plant specimens for the Sul
Ross herbarium, then drawing the
plants. “I would pull out plants I like
and draw for half the day.”
There she attracted the attention of
Dr. Powell and Sharon Yarbourough,
who were in the process of writing
Ferns and Fern Allies of the Trans-Pecos and
Adjacent Areas (2002, Texas Tech
University Press). She took the photos
that appear on the book’s cover and
says, “That was very rewarding, and
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Dr. Powell liked what I was
doing.” He needed drawings
for a book he was writing on
monocots and recruited Petei
to create 10 or 12 detailed
illustrations.
Petei first sketches the
plant in pencil on very fine
Bristol board. She then traces
that with a Rapidograph – a
tube with a pen through it to
ensure a consistent width to
her strokes – onto a special
vellum, using a light table. It’s
a time-consuming process,
and she admits, “It’s tedious.
It would probably make a lot
of people crazy, but I thought
it was fun. You really have to
be focused and concentrate
and not be interrupted.”
She happily soaks up
desert life, would “love to do
a lot more” botanical draw-
ings and sums up all of her
works simply, “I just do what
I do because I enjoy it.”
I N P ERPETUAL
B LOOM
Ellen Ruggia, Big Bend Beardtongue, Penstemon haverdii
Like Patty and Petei, Ellen Ruggia
began illustrating plants while working
for the Sul Ross herbarium. She says,
“When I left, I was still interested in
drawing them, and so I started doing
that.” A graphic designer and co-
owner of Vast Graphics in Alpine,
Ellen applies a somewhat different
perspective to her drawings.
“Most of these are landscape
plants,” she says. “That’s my focus. I
mainly do native plants that are avail-
able for landscaping here in the Big
Bend area. I like drawing things that
are accessible not only to me but
accessible to the viewer.” She first
sketches live plant clippings, often
using samples from her own yard, then
adds color and washes with acrylic
inks and colored pencils.
Although her illustrations are meas-
ured and to scale, they are not meant
to illustrate a typical plant but rather
the one in front of her. “It’s important
to me that they’re accurate. I’m
attempting to depict the specific
details of the species I’m drawing. Part
of that is capturing the attitude of the
plant. That’s why it (the drawing) runs
off the page, like a snapshot. It’s not
isolated.” The artistic perspective,
combined with bright colors, helps her
communicate more than the basic
parts of a plant. “It’s important to me
that they feel alive. Ideally you would
get a feeling for the plant – alive.”
She explains that she isn’t tied to
the more scientific aspects of botanical
illustration because “these aren’t for a
scientist. I’m not making the ideal. I’m
drawing the plant in front of me. I like
continued on page 24
judd
donald
flavin
dan
blumenfeld, erika
hirschi, david
tabatabai, hadi
tillinghast, eric
inde / jacobs
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po box f / marfa tx 79843
info@indejacobs.com
Baxter Studio and Gallery
vilis inde
Paintings of the Big Bend
Rabbit building, Marathon
hours vary, please call first
432-386-4041 • baxtergallery.com
wed - sat 12 - 5
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Cenizo
Second Quarter 2009
9