Following a successful career as a textile designer, I was looking for a new focus and was delighted to be accepted to the Advanced Course in Botanical Illustration with Dianne Sutherland.

Dianne offers extensive tutorial work, hundreds of hours of detailed instructive videos, and printable documents to supplement the learning around different topics and modules to all of the students. 

The Advanced course is especially structured in terms of personalised mentoring appropriate to the style and circumstance of each individual student.  Her comprehensive critiques (which often many pages in writing and full colour edited visualisations) have been so insightful in offering immediate solutions and also learning curves for future paintings. 

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Dianne is almost continuously and most generously available for questions, comments, approvals of draft compositions, and advice about ongoing projects.  Her helpful suggestions at each stage have prevented all sorts of calamities in respect of drawing, compositional, colour and botanical accuracy.   

Moreover Dianne’s constant encouragement to move forwards, even in the face of quite terrifying challenges, and her innate belief in our abilities has encouraged me to undertake projects aimed at a fully professional level, which I would have not believed possible at the outset of the course.

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For one painting, which was later accepted for the RGBE Florilegium, everything needed to be researched and painted during the first lockdown, when all of the national botanical gardens and reference libraries were closed. Dianne’s botanical knowledge being at the highest level, her advice on locally available plant species and their correct nomenclature was invaluable. 

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With Dianne’s advice and reassurance I have been accepted to the “approved artist list” of the Royal Horticultural Society, and I have been elected a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists. These openings should provide further interesting pathways. 

On other occasions she has advised against unsuitable courses of action, which has been equally helpful, as her unique vision for each student focuses on our own individual strengths.

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Ultimately this course has opened to me exceptional opportunities and given me the confidence to develop my personal style, always underlined with botanical accuracy. The course does require lots of application and self-motivation, which in any case are key attributes to every successful artist. However the effort put in is has always been richly rewarded by the exceptional standard of teaching.  It’s also been delightful to make friends with botanical artists in other parts of the world.                             

Jane Roxburgh

​Jane was delighted to be accepted as a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists SBA in 2022 and went on to exhibit with them for the last time in May 2023, where her painting and mine sat on the same wall. Sadly Jane passed away in October the same year, she is much missed.