How To Make A Painting Yourself From Flowers And Leaves?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Osibana is a popular area of floristry. This art is of particular importance in Japan, where it has been used for more than six centuries. The first herbarium paintings appeared in Russia in the 19th century. Today there is a special interest in this art. Material availability does not require financial costs. Flowers, grass, seeds, leaves, tree bark, poplar fluff - all this can be collected in city squares, brought from the dacha

Now many people are fond of decorative and applied art, for those who have chosen pressed floristry - osibana (erroneous), we offer to get acquainted with the techniques and rules for preparing the material.

Oshibana technique

Craftsmanship requires no financial investment - no need to buy anything. Plants surround us everywhere, it is only important to collect material for future work. It is not necessary to wander through the fields, meadows, forests, you can find everything in the country and even on the windowsill among your indoor plants.

The basis of the craftsmanship consists in preparing the canvas, choosing the composition and gluing the dried blanks. Once you've mastered the Oshibana technique, you can create stunning masterpieces. The skillful arrangement of leaves and petals allows you to convey the quiet beauty of a forest backwater, the cold beauty of snow-capped mountains, the beauty of a still life.

Despite the present simplicity, nevertheless, subtlety of movements, painstaking, artistic taste are required when creating oshibana. It is important to take into account the texture and color of the dried plant, try to maintain its shape and get away from mosaic options. Precision and imagination make it possible to create trees from miniature parts of a dry leaf, from petals to silhouettes of landscape outlines.

The fragility of a dry plant requires careful use of the material. Each element is carefully laid out in the right place and carefully fixed (attached, glued).

Material preparation

Garden and wildflowers, festive bouquets and indoor plants are fertile material for the implementation of creative ideas. The main point is the preparation of plants, which will be the artist's “palette”. Correctly dried stems, leaves retain their natural color and contain a rich range of shades. Drying is carried out under pressure and taking into account the rules of herbarium methods. Sometimes special processing is used to change the color and texture.

The basis for the paintings is perfectly cardboard, wood, fabric, and whatman paper. Preliminary preparation consists in applying an adhesive layer, toning with watercolors, washing with paints.

How to choose plants

There are difficulties in drying some plants, so it is advisable to know the principles of selection. Loose, fleshy, moisture-saturated flowers do not lend themselves well to herbarization, for example: lilies, tulips, gladioli, hyacinths. Such specimens often rot and lose their color. Hydrangea, lunaria plates, yarrow, physalis lanterns dry well.

It is useful to know that in order to preserve the bowl of inflorescence, it is better to give preference to a fresh, just opened bud. This technique allows you to maintain the shape of the flower and prevent scattering during the drying process.

How to dry and store plants

For textured components, plants are dried in the shade, suspended, with good air circulation. Cereals, on the other hand, are placed in the sun. Compressed material is required for flat compositions. For these purposes, a herbarium grid and a press are used. You can use an old book or load. There are options for using a microwave oven, a hot iron (ironing between sheets of paper). These quick methods change the color a lot, making the plants look faded (keep this in mind when creating your composition).

The workpieces must be stored in closed cardboard boxes, exclude sunlight. Pre-treatment with hairspray is provided, this is especially true for delicate, fragile leaves and stems.

Oshibana basic techniques and equipment

For work, you need to purchase PVA glue or another that does not leave a trace after drying. Prepare sharp scissors (manicure), glue brushes of different sizes, tweezers, cardboard or canvas on the frame. And of course the spectrum of dried plants.

Before starting the creative process, the composition is well thought out, correlated with the available material. It is necessary to mentally imagine the stages of work. On the selected basis, a sketch of the picture is made. The image is applied with a simple pencil. Further, in accordance with the plan, the largest components are laid out, the texture and color are carefully thought out. This important point requires a sense of composition, artistic perception, taste.

Tips from experienced craftsmen: do not rush to glue all the elements at once. In this state, the sketch-construction of the picture should be left for some time, several times examined, analyzed, and evaluated. Perhaps something needs to be replaced, removed, added. If everything suits you, stick it on and start working with small details, add the desired shades, work out the contours.

The finished picture can be covered with colorless varnish and placed under glass in a frame. It is advisable to avoid direct sunlight. For miniatures, a mat is necessarily made.