Use a separate piece of vellum for colour studies before beginning your painting. Watercolour does not behave in the same way on vellum as it does on paper, and colours can appear far more vibrant on it.
#The vellum free#
Ensure that your hands and forearms are completely clean and free of any oil or hand cream before you begin working, as this can transfer to the vellum surface and prevent paint from adhering to it. 
Mask your sheet to a board before you begin working, or buy a sheet that has been professionally mounted on board.
Vellum is very responsive to water, and tends to buckle. Here are a few practical tips for working on vellum: Tempted to try? Practical tips for working on vellumĭespite the challenges that vellum poses to artists, it undoubtedly offers a fascinating surface and strong visual impact. Her hauntingly beautiful depictions of lichen, cells, and pathogens have been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Centre for Craft and Design, and won the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Award in 2014. After graduating from her MA at the Royal College of Art, Laura spent several years working for a traditional bookbinders, mastering the craft of leatherwork and working with vellum, which she then began to apply to her own sculptural installations. (Image courtesy of and copyright Fiona Strickland)Īnother artist using vellum to depict the natural world in a unique and striking way is the sculptor Laura Youngson Coll. It takes such tenacity and demands the utmost respect for the finest of artist’s materials.’ This painstaking process means that the largest of her works took over 400 hours to complete, yet the result is a glorious depth of colour that perfectly captures the form of her plant subjects, while also expressing intense energy and emotion.Įnglish Florists’ Tulip Group Portrait – Tulipa ‘Lord Stanley’, Tulipa ‘Talisman’, & Tulipa ‘Joseph Paxton Flame’, watercolour on Kelmscott vellum, 41 x 63 cms, by Fiona Strickland – a painting that took over 400 hours to create. ‘It may take several hours or days to realise just a few centimetres and it can’t be rushed. ‘I apply the paint with a very small sable brush, slowly building subtle shifts in tone and colour to describe their form,’ Fiona explains. Unlike paper, vellum is non-absorbent, meaning that watercolours sit on its surface, and must be applied using a ‘dry brush’ technique in multiple layers (with the artist waiting for each layer to dry before applying the next). Working with vellum todayĬontemporary artist Fiona Strickland at work in her studio (Image courtesy of and copyright Fiona Strickland)Ĭontemporary painter Fiona Strickland is among those taking up the challenge of capturing botanical subjects on vellum, and has spent the past two years creating 18 vellum paintings that will be exhibited at Jonathan Cooper Gallery in London this September, a project that she describes as ‘a labour of love’. From around 1700, however, miniaturists began painting on ivory, with vellum used mainly by botanical artists, such as Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), a tradition that was revived in the mid-20th century by the remarkable Scottish painter Rory McEwen (1932–1982), whose work has inspired an entire generation of botanical artists. The techniques used by artists in illuminated manuscripts also lent themselves well to portrait miniatures, which first became popular in the court of Elizabeth I, ensuring that vellum played an important role in art history even as paper and the printing press increasingly replaced manuscripts. In the Middle Ages, vellum was used in precious illuminated manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels (produced in around 715 to 720 AD), and for important secular records, such as the Doomsday Book of 1086, and the Magna Carta in 1215. Vellum has a long and illustrious history, and was described by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC. 
The opening of St Luke’s Gospel in the Lindisfarne Gospels, circa 715 AD (image in the public domain)
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