How often do you post paintings?

I’m aiming to paint one plant pathogen each week, using ink paints, and to post them all online no matter whether I am happy with the end result or not.

How long do the paintings take?

These are relatively quick sketches (between one and five hours each). The more detailed the picture, the longer it usually takes.

Why Plant Pathogens?

1) I really like plants, and plant diseases.

2) I’ve had more feedback and support, for my plant disease paintings, than for anything else that I’ve created.

3) I love that people sometimes use these paintings when teaching or presenting!

Why are there more paintings of pathogenic fungi than anything else?

1) Many pathogenic fungi have clear, interesting, or easily identifiable phenotypes. Especially rust fungi. Bacterial and viral infections are far harder to identify from symptoms alone, especially for the latter. Heat damage, herbicides, bacterial and viral symptoms can all appear very similar. Often the cause can only be fully determined via molecular methods.

2) I’ve spent more time studying pathogenic fungi than anything else.

3) These are what people have requested on my twitter page or through the contact form.

4) I am planning on adding more paintings from other disease sources eventually (parasitic plants, nematodes, oomycetes, phytoplasma, insects etc) .

Why ink painting?

I was given a set of ink paints for Christmas in 2021, and discovered that I really enjoyed using them.

Do you really do one painting a week?

On average, yes. Sometimes I get more than one done and I’ll use the extra for a week where I don’t have the time to paint.

Paired paintings - why do you do them?

Creating complementary pairs of paintings on the same page allows me to:

• practice placement and framing, e.g. allowing enough space for each painting and not running right up to the edge of the page.

• highlight commonalities and differences in disease symptoms.

• show complementary leaf shapes or colours that appealed.

Occasionally I create pairs of paintings on separate pages. This tends to be when I have completed a whole-page painting, and then thought of a related image that I would like to paint.

Shouldn’t these be called plant disease paintings, not plant pathogen paintings?

Yes, but I chose alliteration over pedantic accuracy.

What will you do when you run out of plant diseases to paint?

There are more plant diseases than you would imagine…

Have you really made an entire website for your hobby?

Yes.