Create a complex artwork - Part 1: Arranging your pressed flower meadow

Creating a Complex Artwork - Part 1: Arranging Your Pressed Flower Meadow

Taking things to an even bigger scale, we'll now show you how to make a 'meadow' inspired artwork using a variety of different stems.

You Will Need:

• A variety of different pressings
• Large acid-free off-white mount board
• Scalpel or scoring tool
• Masking tape
• Scissors

Flowers Used:

• Wild grasses
• Ammi Majus - we always like to use Umbellifers in our 'meadow' inspired pieces
• Buttercup

Setting Out Your Composition

You can seek inspiration from all sorts of places for this piece; perhaps your own garden, a local public garden or the wider landscape around you such as seasonal meadows.

• You should include a variety of heights, and layer different flowers within the artwork to give interest and texture.
• Put your tallest pressings on the page first - these are your background flowers and will set the highest point of your piece. Their structure acts as a framework to highlight the shorter, more colourful stems that you can then layer on top.
• Layering is key, but be careful not to obstruct an important piece of the specimen beneath.
• Include specimens with lovely bends and shapely lines to replicate the natural movement of the flowers.
• It's good to have some repetition in your piece by alternating different species and creating groupings of the same species.
• Think about how the plant might naturally grow, and replicate this in your composition.
• Try not to have too many empty stems at the bottom, add in leaves to break up the blank space.
• Trust your eye, and be guided by what you think looks right - there isn't a wrong way to create your artwork.
• If you find that you are happy with a little section, it's worth using masking tape to lightly stick it down so that you don't disturb it as you work across the rest of the page.
• Take a picture of your work as you go, to see how the composition is working from a different perspective.