Sarah Crowe - Nature Artist

24/05/2026

15/05/2026

Spot the Beetle 🪲 (Hint: zoom in and look for a red stripe)
New Orcadian Name: Peedie Reid Gablo
full details: https://speciesontheedge.co.uk/rare-orcadian-beastie-gets-a-new-name-introducing-the-peedie-reid-gablo/

Following my illustration session with Dounby Primary P5's, I had the fantastic opportunity Species on the Edge and project partners NatureScot and Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust to produce a completed version of the Plantain Leaf Beetle for an inset on a reporting card. The illustration was also a chance for some practice development; being completed in a combination of traditional dry and watersoluble coloured pencil and Ink (more information https://www.sarahkcrowe.com/work/leafbeetlelogo

The beetle is currently found only in Orkney, Shetland and around the shores of Loch Etive, and sighting of it can be logged on irecord.org. The reporting cards are currently with Species on the Edge Orkney, but will soon be distributed to local businesses where a copy can be picked up.

13/05/2026

Had great fun yesterday, with a soft run of a botanical sketchbooking in graphite for mindfulness workshop that I was running during the Orkney Nature Festival It is probably one of the most challenging places to run anything outdoors, ecspecially where everyone is sitting trying to draw and I used my Plan B of 1 hour outdoors, then 1 hour indoors with a hot drink in VPCo Stromness Coffee which was appreciated and enjoyed by everyone. I'm looking forward to running more of these in the future, with a bit of tweaking on the planning to keep them weatherproof.

27/03/2026

The 2026 programme is now live at ⬇️ https://orkneynaturefestival.co.uk/2026-festival/ with 7 days of inspiring events to help you discover the natural landscape of Orkney. The festival runs from the 11-17 May

I will be hosting two workshops through the Festival with details also available on my website with the ONF booking link (where you can see examples of sketchbooking).

Events (all include materials to keep)
Botanical Sketchbooking in Graphite for Mindfulness
Tuesday 12th May, 2-4 pm in the George Mackay Memorial Garden, Stromness
Cost; £40 per person
Details https://www.sarahkcrowe.com/events/orkneynaturefestivalsketchbooking
Nature Sketchbooking workshop funded by Species on the Edge
Thursday 14th May, 2-4pm meeting at Balfour Hospital Gardens, Kirkwall (TBC)
Cost: Free
Details https://www.sarahkcrowe.com/events/natureartspeciesontheedge

25/03/2026

Although only part of the composition will be used, I wanted to use the plant-pollinator composition as part of my professional development and work on compositional skills. My composition of Red Clover [Trifolium pratense], Common Birdsfoot-trefoil [Lotus corniculatus] along with the target pollinator species the Great Yellow Bumblebee [Bombus distinguendus] and one of the most readily seen butterfly species the Red Admiral [Vanessa atalanta] in a mixture of Traditional Coloured Pencil, watersoluble coloured pencil and graphite.

The wildflower piece is to bring an awareness to the importance of often overlooked wildflower species (which in this case are found amongst the grassland dune system) to pollinators. One of the broader focuses of is to help re-establish pollinator corridors to help replace the historically lost species-rich machair and other traditional unimproved grasslands; ecspecially for the Great Yellow Bumblebee which currently is only found on Orkney, Caithness and Sutherland and Western Isles. The Barrier No. 4 location also forms part of a mapped, envisaged B-line by , which on Orkney stretches from Stromness to St Margaret's Hope. Discovering the B-lines project has helped me form a meaningful link between various pieces of artwork I am working on, and also has allowed me to fully reengage with my former profession as a plant biogeographer.

25/03/2026

In November 2025 I was commissioned by Orkney to produce some illustrations that could partly be incorporated into a new interpretation board at the Churchill barrier No. 4 car park to help bring a greater ecological awareness of the fragile Dune-Coastal ecosystem that has been created and show the location as being part of a pollinator corridor on Orkney, helping people connect with the landscape around them which is central to my humanist ethics and focus on positive environmentalism. The illustrations are now incorporated into my business cards and I plan to produce art prints of them in the future to showcase my work.

I wanted to use the illustration work to showcase the medium of pencil. The central foreground piece of Red Clover, Common Birdsfoot-trefoil, Great Yellow Bumblebee and Red Admiral Butterfly have been completed in Coloured Pencil and Graphite (Wildflowers), with the Bee and Butterfly in watersoluble and dry coloured Pencil. The bird illustrations are all a mixture of watersoluble tinted graphite and coloured pencil.

07/02/2026

📸 Samantha Stringer

From November 2025 and a fun afternoon teaching a class of P5 from Dounby Primary School how to illustrate the Plantain Leaf Beetle [Chrysolina haemoptera] in watercolour pencil and traditional coloured pencil; including the use of Sepia and Dark Indigo to create black with depth.

This was all part of their award which they talked about in a recent article in . I am back with the same group this week to teach them about the food plants of the beetle.

21/01/2026

As well as visiting the Flora Indica exhibition, I enjoyed a full day walking around amongst the trees and inside the temperate glasshouse, dambling in some photography with the aim of using some as reference for future illustration work.

21/01/2026

On 12 January (my birthday) I finally had an opportunity to visit and the gallery to visit the Flora Indica exhibition of rediscovered illustrations from the late 18th and early 19th and the amazing quality of these delicate watercolours on what looked like very fine pieces of paper. Alongside them were the beautiful contemporary illustrations of India's rich plant species