Update: Great post by Julie over at Human Flower Project. I’ve been practicing this technique with my monthly bloom day posts and some other fiddling around:
May post (cold) | May post (hot) | Violets | April post
This morning over at Cold Climate Gardening, Kathy posted about Katinka Matson’s scanned flower art. I first became aware of this technique in a New York Times artcle (abstract only unless you have TimesSelect) by uber garden writer Ken Druse back in April 2005. He profiled artist Ellen Hoverkamp’s technique of arranging flowers on the platen of a flatbed scanner, with the resulting prints looking like old-timey pressed-flower arrangements, only with vibrant colors and 3-D effects.
Before I even finished reading the article, I ran over to my office windowsill, snapped off whatever was flowering (violets, geraniums, fuschias), tossed them on the scanner, threw my jacket over the top, and hit scan. That’s the image there on the right. Larger image.
That doesn’t really do the technique justice. It’s just to prove that this is one of those techniques that takes a minute to learn — and a lifetime to master. In addition to Matson’s site (check out her gallery), Hoverkamp’s site offers gorgeous examples. And I stumbled across another floral scanner artist, Patri Feher.
I thank Kathy for reminding me about this technique. Maybe I’ll get into it again this year. When I do, here’s the how-to site that I’ll digest and put to good use. But in all honesty, the biggest barrier (beyond time) is that I really have a hard time cutting my best flowers off at the knees, even if they’ll be immortalized in art.
