TOOLS to LIVEBY

One day in the afternoon I passed by a bookstore after visiting my favourite flower market, I accidentally noticed this botanic illustration book - Botanicum. It is a botanic book by illustration artist Katie Scott and commissioned by the Kew garden, one of the world-leading royal botanic garden. Ever since then I have fallen in love with Katie Scott’s unique anatomical illustration style.

Katie Scott’s visual language draws on different elements from hundreds and thousands of years of scientific artworks but different from other anatomical drawings she gives it a modern twist. With illustration, she thinks it is not just producing a representation but also relaying any number of images and influences that you have absorbed.”

Although Katie Scott was born in the digital generation, she still used to draw with pen and paper before digitalising the illustration on to the tablet. She believes when you zoom in on an eye and spend too much time perfecting on the computer, you lose that reality and character. It becomes too hyperreal. On the computer, she fills in using colour variants made from the same five watercolour swatches she scanned in years ago. The distinctive colour palette combined with her craftsmanship detail drawing style that gives her such a rich year refined signature.

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Katie Scott