Drawing Plants. A Journey into the World of Plants

#finearts #drawing

The workshop's participants will study historical plant samples, explore the Botanical Garden and discover structures with the microscope. The gathered knowledge they will develop into a graphical interpretation of the plant world.

In my workshop you will have the opportunity to engage intensively with botanical phenomena. We will go on voyages of discovery into nature. We will visit special research sites in Berlin on three excursions and examine the plant world in different ways: Systematics and stylization based on historical models in the Laboratory for Drawing at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK); richness of form and complexity in the Botanical Garden; surface structures in the Microscopy Centre at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. At these three locations, which each reveal different aspects of the plant world, participants will learn drawing strategies and gain an insight into the natural world. In this first phase of the workshop, I teach drawing techniques that allow participants to look more closely and accumulate.

Repeated work in nature and in front of the microscope will enable you to gather intensive impressions and develop an awareness of systematics and variations. We will look at how we can interrogate the nature of plants to develop and hone artistic concerns. Based on intensive study after observation, we want to investigate how close reality and fiction are to each other and how they can cross-fertilize each other in the artistic process. Like the travelers and explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries, we will embark on a journey of discovery.

Invited are visual artists, architects, designers, as well as self-taught artists with previous knowledge of drawing, who are interested in deepening their study of nature and who want to collectively open up perspectives for their respective artistic practice.

Schedule

Day 1 - Study of plant models from the 19th century in the UdK Laboratory

Day 2 - Study of plants in the Dahlem Botanical Garden

Day 3 - Studying plants in the Dahlem Botanical Garden

Day 4 - Drawing under the microscope in the microscopy laboratory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Day 5 - Drawing under the microscope in the microscopy laboratory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Knowledge requirements
Previous knowledge of drawing

Kerstin Hille is a visual artist and head of the laboratory for drawing at the Berlin University of the Arts. After graduating as a master student in 2001 at the weissensee kunsthochschule berlin, she worked at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in 2004, where she made scientific drawings in the zoology department. As an artist, she works in parallel with drawing and printmaking, forming intersections here and experimentally exploring the possibilities of these two media. Together with Angela Nikolai (née Bösl), she published PFLANZEN FORMEN LEHRE in 2016, which brings together historical and current positions in the study of plants in drawing at the Berlin University of the Arts.
www.kerstinhille.de