FLORA2: Bodoni Variations V3.5

FLORA2 is an extension of FLORA. What makes it different is the addition of the beautifully dramatic type face BODONI. It’s got all the thicks and thins of calligraphic hands like Open-Shaded Script, that we love.

This latest version has significant updates that include a grid for each exercise, table of contents, the original version of the Bodoni typeface, updated minuscules, additional swatch pages, and new final projects.

Drawing variations of Bodoni is like drawing dessert cakes on a pretty lace doily. They are chunky and fleshy, yet their hairlines are soooooo delicate.

Everything you loved about FLORA, you’ll love about this class. We’ll be studying more florals and flourishes to keep it interesting.

Included is the supply list and information you might be familiar with having taken FLORA before. But if this is your first time, then enjoy!
Much love,
~Anne

FLORA 2, v 3.5 Exemplar PDF Download
69 8.5 x 11 inch pages
71.3 MB PDF
4-C
Print at 100% (NOT fit-to-page.)
$46

Welcome to FLORA with Anne Elser! •

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.“ -John Muir

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.” - Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Flora was born on the heels of my course “Love, Fear, and Flourishing” after a solid year of working with students from all over, who saw (many of them for the first time) the freedom an oval provides when harnessing the power of the flourish and how it relates to our lettering.

Flora is also a direct extension of “Mono Linear Lettering: Cursive Crush & Open-Shaded Script” in that we move closer to painting with the aid of a mono line celebrated with a watercolor PENCIL and awakened gently with a fine pointed brush. This two-step process is as pleasurable as it is fascinating and it is my deepest desire that you discover more of yourself in the gentle forms of curving leaves, folding petals, and sweeping stems, all along the oval paths of your letter forms and flourishes.

FLORA is a feminine personification of the healing powers of nature, and draws upon the texture florae make available when looking for a way to fill out and make more dense, our work. FLORA is first drawn with our oldest friend, the pencil - that pressure-sensitive, soft, blunt stick we are all more familiar with than most - the tool we held as toddlers that made our first marks on paper - the beloved crayon, pencil, or colored pencil.

But now that we are grown-ups, why be satisfied with a mere pencil, when you can use a watercolor pencil, right?!

The watercolor pencil’s unique gift is that it can be awakened with water, and not only that, but it can change when that water carries with it another pigment. We will use soft oval-shaped curves to describe absolutely every space-filling element on the page and with every stroke, you’ll find yourself allowing, as Mary Oliver so eloquently states, “the soft animal of your body (to) love what it loves.”

This is my prayer and goal in teaching FLORA. I am sharing with you, my personal mode of self care and healing. FLORA is what I do each and every morning as I sit by the fire to journal. I use her to process my thoughts, to welcome the day, to asks for grace, and to find the silver lining in everything that crosses my path. She is a gentle way for me to try on larger, braver strokes. She’s soft, adaptable, and portable. FLORA requires paper, a small brush, pencil, one cake of watercolor, a small amount of water, and my newest friend: you.