Pressed flowers: using pressed flowers to help design.
So I'm getting ready for my workshop at Mount Coot-Tha botanical gardens this weekend (16th May 2021). As part of my artist residency with the gardens I present a monthly free workshop gearing around my work. I have decided from the beginning of the residency to use these monthly creative art workshop as a way to help others add a little bit of creativity in their lives, to think outside the box and try different materials and techniques to encourage a daily practice of making, drawing, and observing.
So why do I pressed flowers?
We all, or most of us have had those moments of being out in a garden, park, wedding and picking a flower and popping it into a book. Whether as a child or to remember a romantic gesture or just to preserve a flower. I think this is another way of connecting a memory or moment of time with a keepsake unique object. As a designer I tend to use pressed flowers, usually gathered whilst sketching or walking as a colourful bi product of my daily practice. An object that develops over time in the back of my sketchbook over time, to create and designs with. The flowers gathered are beautiful and usually i capture an image of them on my hand (see above). The pressed specimen then becomes distorted, the original shape flatten over time taking in each fold or ripple until this once 3D object then becomes 2D and a different object of interest. When I gather these objects up I can play with their shapes putting together layered designs that I can then draw on to create jewellery or illustrated watercolour works of art.
These compositions could quite easily sit alone in a glass frame and perhaps I will get to just seeing them as that but for now they get used over and over to play with composition of shapes and forms I can use in my art.
How to press flowers
- Old fashioned Wooden Flower Press
Layering up like a sandwich you place the flowers
picked between sheets of paper, cardboard and 2 external wooden sheets. This
can then be fastened by straps or screw with a wing nut option and tightening a
little each day. No one ever expects the Spanish inquisition! LOL
This is by far the most transitional way of
pressing flowers and the scale is up to you, just remember to use blotting
paper for the flowers in your layering and change it every 7 to 10 days to
prevent browning. Allow about a month before harvesting these pressed gems
- Press Flowers Using a Book
So i grew up in a time when we all got yellow pages
directory for free every year. For a younger audience this was the world’s
heaviest book with the best blotting paper for pressing flowers. We had this
option growing up and of course the good old Encyclopedia Britannica. Both
excellent source of heavy dated reading matter that you didn't mind mashing up
with flower juice.
- Press Flowers Using an Iron
So this one I have not tried yet for fear of
burning the house down or ruining the iron, but will do the experiment in the
next couple of days and pop up a video with the process and results. So it
takes a bit of preparation, use a dry iron and pre-press your flowers
between 2 pieces of absorbent paper like paper towel between the
pages of a heavy book. Transfer the flower between 2 fresh pieces
of paper and Iron the flower on a low heat, moving from one side of
the paper to the other in firm smooth movements for 10/15 min. Stop when
flower seems dry and stiff.
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