pine needle flower

A flower using different coloured needles.































Over-exposing the photograph creates the illusion the flower is floating. Tom adds scale.

pine needle drawings

The frozen snow is a vast undulating canvas waiting for the artist. Here pine needles are used to create a drawing on the snow. The encroaching shadows lessen the contrast and a rise in temperature will melt the icy crust and a metamorphosis will occur. Let's keep watch.

Mississippi, winter

Visited Winona yesterday, and for the first time, The Minnesota Marine Art Museum. Exciting to find paintings by Renoir, Pissarro, Monet, Picasso, and early Van Gogh, so close to home! The Mississippi is an inspiration at all times of the year. But when the museum, overlooking the river encourages you to take a sketchbook and crayons, what excuse do you have?

An added bonus was one of their current exhibitions: 'Drawn to the River: Books and Wood Block Prints by Gaylord Schanilec', on show until March 6.

Well worth a visit.

eiπ+1=0

Some time ago I asked a mathematician what he considered the most beautiful equation. He offered Maxwell's four equations relating electric and magnetic fields and an explanation. I was intrigued and considered how one might convey this beauty typographically.

At the Codex Book Fair in Berkeley, yesterday (today is the last day) I was pleased to sell one of my Florilegium flowers to a gentleman who offered the above: Euler's famous equation.

Brief research has yielded this elegant description from Jerry P. King in The Art of Mathematics:

'The five most important constants in mathematics are the numbers e, i, π, 1, and 0. (There is no doubt of this; just stop any 100 mathematicians and ask them.) Moreover, the most vital relation in mathematics is the relation of “equality” and the paramount operations are addition, multiplication, and the operation called “exponentiation.” [The above equation], as you can see, contains all of these things and nothing else. The equation portrays completeness because it contains these important mathematical concepts and, morever, it contains nothing extraneous.'

I believe a new book has been conceived . . . a collection of beautiful equations.

Florilegium Solmentes to be published at Oak Knoll Fest on 31 October

Florilegium Solmentes will make its first appearance in public this weekend in New Castle, Delaware, at the 17th Oak Knoll Fest.

Full details will now be found on the Solmentes Web site. Here is the final description:

Florilegium Solmentes is a portfolio of twenty-four unique ‘digital’ flowers created by David Esslemont from ‘nature prints’ of leaves, from scanned petals and from other parts of plants found on his farm in northeast Iowa. Some flowers are wholly imaginary, others are loosely based on real specimens. The project evolved from nature printing experiments inspired by the writings and examples of some notable pioneers such as Luca Pacioli.



An accompanying book, The Making of Florilegium Solmentes, tells the story. It describes how the flowers were created using image-editing software and how the geometry of the flower led to some interesting diversions into the world of mathematics, optical illusions and pattern making. Included are eight original prints from leaves, (two with watercolour washes).



The Flowers
Each flower is printed on archival Somerset Enhanced paper, 17 x 22 inches, signed by the artist and with the edition number and title.



Separate Prints
The flowers are also available as signed prints in the same format, 17 x 22 inches.

Edition details
Published in October 2010.
Printed on 17 x 22 inch (432 x 559 mm) Somerset Enhanced paper with pigment inks. Presented in a cloth-covered drop-back box together with The Making of Florilegium Solmentes: Nature prints & digital flowers.
Ten numbered sets.

Printing The Making of Florilegium Solmentes

A sheet from The Making of Florilegium Solmentes: Nature prints & digital Flowers that will accompany ten sets of the portfolio; twenty copies will be offered for sale separately.

The book includes eight original prints from leaves, (two with watercolour washes). It describes how the digital flowers were created using image-editing software and how the geometry of the flower led to some interesting diversions into the world of mathematics, optical illusions and pattern making.

Florilegium Solmentes is a portfolio of unique ‘digital’ flower prints created from ‘nature prints’ of leaves, from scanned petals and from other parts of plants found on our farm near Decorah in northeast Iowa. Some flowers are wholly imaginary, others are loosely based on real specimens.

Gazania "talent"

Another gazania flower created using the coneflower petal and center, a companion to:

Flax flower evolution

The colouring of the "flax flower" above is loosely based on a rock rose, genus Helianthemum of the family Cistaceae, in this case H. mummularium (common rock rose) of which there are many cultivars. Looking more like a zebra tomato, it does not have the papery petals of the rock roses as these are based Linum narbonense an ornamental species of flax. It was the third flower created in the flax series.



It evolved from a scanned petal of an evening primrose (Oenothera) made in July 2009.



The aim was to create a five-petalled flax flower so modifcation began in Photoshop. By changing the hue and saturation of the yellow petal, adding selective color changes and gradient overlays to achieve the basic "flax blue", the petal shape was cut and further modified:



Deep blue and yellow versions were also created



The following modifications were made and then "layered" to create the red petals based on the colouring of the rock rose:








For the center of the flower I used the spiny paleae of the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpuuria) a genus of the Asteraceae family and native of North America.



The yellow center is a modified version of one scanned last summer (above right).

Thank you KS for asking how they were made (see http://solmentes.blogspot.com/2010/03/flax-and-zebra-tomato-flowers.html).

Repeat patterns

How many units are repeated? Answer: thirty-two (8 x 4). As the pattern is repeated, new patterns emerge and it develops a new dynamic. Click to see a larger version in a new window.

Flax and zebra tomato flowers

A bed of flowers

This random display of "flax flowers" leads me to think about fabric designs. Changing the hue/saturation of the master pattern is easy to do in Photoshop. What hasn't been done is the alignment of the edge details, so tiling these patterns would yield a rectangular grid rather than an overall blanket effect. Let me see if I can do that, meanwhile here are some other colourways:





The Zebra tomato flax flower

Starting with the traditional blue flax flower this strange hybrid evolved. The individual flower resembles a Zebra heirloom tomato.

Fireflower

Fireflower

Working again on the Florilegium, mostly editing the text for the accompanying book but also being sidetracked by the Bradbury story (see previous post). I will create another dozen flowers to finish the project and this "Fireflower" is a possible candidate. Using a photograph of a neighbour's burning field as the background to the leaf lends another dimension to the image.

Still searching for the flower that "pulls" you in with an extraordinary and exotic centre, such as the tulips have. Although it is now March, here in Iowa, there is still snow on the ground and it will be some time before we see any new plants, let alone flowers.