It usually starts with a walk, I have some places I like to return to.
This one requires a bus ride to reach, but it is well worth it. It’s a special place, it is a burial ground from the iron age aprox 400 A.D. located just next to a big beech wood. And it is also one of my childhold playgrounds 😊
I found this mushroom the first time a couple of years ago, and this year was obviously a good year for them. They were growing literally everywere under the beech trees at the outskirts of the burial ground. Since they grow on dead branches fallen to the ground, maybe it is only that this year there are many branches in the right condition!
Four of the shrooms decided to go home with me.
The first thing I do is to try to find out what species it is, this one turned out to be quite easy. It was the smell that gave it away, it’s a Garlic Parachute and it reallys smells a lot, in a good way!
Next I do drawings of them, I like to do them as soon as possible before they start to wilt. This one has a really sturdy stem, but the hat is floppy. But it turned out that they lasted for over a week in the fridge without loosing too much of its stability.
Next thing is a coloursketch in my sketchbook. I like to do this as soon as possible too, before any discolouration occurs. Most shrooms looses the freshnes of the colours quite quick in the fridge.
This sketchbook contains random things, sometimes I do colour notes and sometimes I just paint.
Playing with different props and items for an Instagram post.
And as you can see in this picture this mushshroom kind of collaps after a while.
When painting I like to have one or two mushrooms and other stuff at my desk, not allways looking that much on them. After a while I tend to leave the accuracy and start to paint more freely. These paintings are not botanical illustrations, they are botanical art with some, or a lot, of artistic freedom.
The final painting, my scanner has stopped working so this is a photo with my smart phone.
It is sometimes a bit anoying, that these tech things take so much time, when all I want is to paint :-)
