I love drawing, especially drawing flowers. I draw them with pencil and with oil pastels, with silk paint and with beads and threads, with computer software and with stencils, with pen and ink and with anything else that I feel inspired to use.

Some of the pictures depict fairly classical images of flowers, whilst others are created with some use of "artistic licence". In this instance I use the expression "artistic licence" as a euphemism, meaning that I have used my imagination and my own creative techniques to depict flowers in an "artistic" way rather than depicting a more scientifically correct image.

So I like to think that the more "artistic" flowers could be called flower art, or floral designs, inspired by the shapes of flower petals and other parts of plants such as stems and leaves.

For flowers that I draw which resemble more closely their natural state, I use the term "botanical art" although some of my images could also come under the heading of "still life", such as flowers in a vase. I've read about "botanical illustration" and "botanical art" to try to get to a closer understanding of what these different terms may mean.

Botanical illustration seems to refer to those drawings and paintings which as near as possible resemble the natural flora, and often include details of leaves and seed pods as well as dissections of various parts of the plant so that the inner workings of the nature of the plant can be seen. These exacting drawings were used before there was photography so that scientists and horticulturalists had very detailed and very good visual reference material to help to identify different species although botanical illustrations are still used as well as photographs.

According to Dianne Sutherland (see 2nd reference below) botanical art is still realistic but a bit more relaxed than the more scientific images of botanical illustration, whereas flower painting or floral art is very much an artistic expression of flowers, however the artist feels moved to interpret them.

So, to all botanical illustrators or lovers of their work, I have no intention of claiming to use the term "botanical art" to suggest in any way that my flower pictures are in the genre of "botanical illustration". I have simply used my interpretation of information such as in the references below, to apply the term "botanical art" to my pictures of flowers that look fairly realistic but which are not intended to be scientifically "exact". And my other flower pictures can be called just that (flower pictures) or floral designs, or flower paintings, or still life, or whatever.... They are simply my own artistic expression of some of the beautiful flora that is found on this earth.

References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_illustration (accessed 23rd January 2019)

https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2017/10/09/botanical-dianne-sutherland/ (accessed 23rd January 2019)