Artist Profile

A lifelong love of drawing and painting led me to study for a degree in botanical, zoological and medical illustration at Middlesex Polytechnic in 1980.  It was a wonderful course with wonderful tutors.   Our teacher, Keith Pickard, illustrated David Attenborough’s Life on Earth book, so we knew we were in good hands.   It was Keith that taught us the watercolour technique that we all used for botanical, zoological and medical illustration.  It’s a marvelous technique and one that I have also used for still life painting and portrait painting.  I have been so grateful to have learned the technique that it eventually led to a desire to pass the skill onto others and after becoming a freelance illustrator that is how I became a teacher too.

I loved illustration and was delighted to illustrate a wide range of subject matter as a freelance illustrator after leaving college and my clients included The Natural History Museum, BBC World Service, Marks and Spencer, Allied Lyons, Cannon Babysafe, Dr Barnados, Grants of St James, Majestic Wines, Sandtex Paints, Good Housekeeping Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Penguin Books, Harper Collins, Guild Publishing and Marshall Cavendish.

When I wanted to teach in 1998, I was delighted to find a degree course similar to the one that I undertook and was very lucky to do so as they are few and far between.  It was a course in Wildlife Illustration at Carmarthen College of Technology and Art and it included botanical illustration too.  I passed the watercolour technique that I had learned on to the students there, and thoroughly enjoyed doing it.  I also taught life drawing there, which appealed to me a great deal as I love drawing so much.  I also taught flower painting evening classes for the college, another thing that I thoroughly enjoyed as it is something that I love to do myself.  I taught the classes at the National Botanic Garden of Wales which was the perfect setting for them.  I also taught botanical painting and life drawing at a local gallery and flower painting for a local art shop at various gardens in the area all of which I loved doing.

Whilst teaching I also studied for a postgraduate teaching certificate in further and higher education and that was wonderful and taught me so much about teaching others.  Through the course I taught on I was given the opportunity to write and teach on a botanical illustration correspondence course for beginners and I loved translating everything that I had learned into writing.  Now I have the opportunity to translate some of what I have learned into writing on this website which is something that I will love doing too…….  

Lynette Conway