Flowerschlagen
For lack of a better phrase, and because Hammerschlagen was always ridiculous and fun to play at the annual Oktoberfest I went to forever, years ago… I’m calling “flower hammering” art “Flowerschlagen” for the purposes of this post. Ah, memories.
Freshly plucked and dabbed dry of any excess water
Side note though, because I have a soft spot for the Japanese language and really will never get tired of learning languages other than just English (yes I’m serious, try me)… According to the interwebs, this flower hammering technique is often called “Tataki zome” or “Hammer dye” but can also be called “Hape zome” or “Leaf dye”. A lot of the stuff I found written about this pigment transfer technique will use fabric as the base layer, but feel free to go wild and do it on paper, if you feel so inclined (you rebel, you).
Step 1: Gather things. Pluck a few unsuspecting flowers from various bushes out in the yard (or from your neighbor’s yard, if you ask nicely enough or can do it in the cover of darkness… but that’s trespassing, so never mind the latter option. Don’t be a flower stealer, kids). I tried to grab a few different types of flowers (from my own yard), with different colors and different intensity. I also grabbed a few leaves because why not.
Here’s the rough idea of how I wanted everything placed
Step 1(a): Gather all the other things. Paper, a hammer, paper towels, and a flat surface that can withstand the tapping of a hammer without evoking irritation from someone if it leaves dents during the process. In other words, you might want to grab a scrap of wood roughly the size of your paper so that the scrap can bear the brunt of the flowerschlagening (it’s totally a word).
Step 2: Once you’ve dabbed off any excess moisture or morning dew from the petals of the flowers you’ve plucked, arrange the flowers face down on the paper. If any little piece of the stem is sticking up, either trim it off or tape it down - more on that later.
At this step you can either put another piece of paper over the flowers, or put the paper towel over the flowers. Whatever you decide, the paper or paper towels (or wax paper, even) will be the protective layer so that your hammer doesn’t get all juicy from the petals when you mash them.
(I don’t have images from every in between step in the process, so the rest of the photos you’ll see in this post are the final results. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps - ganbatte!)
Step 4: Hulk smash. Erm, ok let’s take it down a notch there, sparky. At this point, tap the hammer where the petals are, to the best of your recollection. Tap tap tap, all around until you’ve tapped the entire surface area of each flower. At this point, if you had any excess stem material, it will likely smash into a bit of a juicy mess. Fear not though, it’s all good in the sake of making art! The point of this step is to transfer as much of the petal pigment/color onto the paper, so put some effort into the schlagening, but be gentle enough not to completely obliterate the petals.
Be firm, gentle, and intentional.
Ohmmm…
Step 5: The Big Reveal. ::Cue dramatic music:: Pull back the paper towel to see what your smushed flowers look like. Don’t be alarmed, some of the plant matter will be stuck to the paper towel, and some of it will be stuck to the paper itself. My advice here: let it dry a bit, and then you can brush the excess plant matter off of the paper. If you try to brush off the excess while it’s still wet, it might smudge the color pigment. Not a big deal either way. Definitely try to brush or scrape off the extra plant matter though, it’ll make the next step easier.
Step 6: Add Lines. I’m a big fan of using ultra fine point Sharpie markers when I’m drawing, so that’s what I used here as well, once everything was nice and dry. I like this step because it gives the image a little more life, transforming it from just being a blob of color on the page into “hey that kinda looks like a flower!” It was also helpful to add some definition to the greenery. The leaves and ferns I used didn’t release as much pigment as the flowers did, so adding some extra lines gave them some structure and might help the viewer’s eye complete the sentence.
Would I do it again? Yes! The whole process was really simple and the end results were totally satisfying. I might try it on fabric next time, or test out some different types of flowers. Thank you, flowers, for letting me schlagen you in the name of art.