Right now pansies and violas are pretty much all you can find at garden centers and they are the best plants for flower pounding. This exercise takes a flower and through the use of brute force (and a hammer) transfers the image of a flower to paper or cloth.
We are back to in-person, unmasked classes at Ann’s Place @annsplaceinc so not surprisingly my class is full with hammer wielding clients.
The long table in the art room is pre-set with lots of flowers, a wooden slab for pounding, watercolor paper, a picture frame, a paper towel, colored pencils, and extra tweezers, hammers, and knifes for those clients who have forgotten them.
The room smells fresh with the perfume of flowers flowing from the numerous plants. As clients arrive, I sense a calm and happiness.
“There are two approaches to pounding flowers,” I start. “With one, you take a big swing like Thor and give it a massive whack. The other involves tiny taps that slowly crush the flower and transfer its colors to the paper.” I illustrate the second approach.
I cut a flower from a plant and lie it on watercolor paper, petal side down. I then put a paper towel on top and then. . .
Tap, tap, tap, tap. . . .tap.
I pull the paper away showing my clients how the flower now looks. But once I remove the smashed petals from the paper revealing a perfect image do the oohs and ahhs start.
Now once viewed, clients start swinging and the Art Room sounds like a carpenter’s convention with a deafening din of hammer against flower against wood.
I have plenty of flowers and colors to select so clients have many options for composition.
Hitting the paper and imprinting a wide array of flowers and patterns, my clients are finally together, in a room, without masks for the first sense of normality in three years.
It’s wonderful.
