They are easy to fall in love with.
And it is so fun to fill a page in a sketchbbok. They also like the companion of dry grass, leaves and the odd samara. Add the date and some notes where they where found and also the mandatory color notes and it is all done!
It all started a couple of years ago. Until then I had mainly focused on painting rosehips, dried leaves and I also desperatly tried to grasp the concept of green leaves.
The green leaves still deceive me, it looks so simple but takes a real effort to make them feel alive on the paper. But then, one late summer the weather stroke the right chord and there were mushrooms all over. Not only in the forest but beside the pavements and in the gravel under park trees in the city. They came in all colours and shapes, alone and in hordes. I just gave in and started to collect and paint them.
That first year was a little hysteric, my fridge was full of mushrooms, most of them probably not for eating… But there were not enough time to paint them all. I so miss the purple one, the only purple one I found this far, I somehow missed to paint that one because I found another one with an oh so interesting pattern on the cap.
Another memorable moment in my ”early” mushroom painting days is the fly agaric. One day I just said to myself, ”today I want to paint a Fly agaric”. I took my bike and rode it out to a nearby recreational area and entered one of the smaller roads leading out in the forrest. And there, under a tree, the most perfect Fly agaric stood and waited for me. I collected it, and back home I spent rest of the day painting it. It was huge! 25 centimeters in heigt, and I was in heaven :-)
Now when the initial excitment has slowed down I try to not jump on the next and the next and so on. I have loads of photos of all sorts of mushrooms, but the best thing is to have them in my hand. The tactical feel is important, is it slimy or is it rough? Also being able to look at it from different angles gives a lot when the final decision on how it want to be portrayed is to be taken. Once carefully drawn and painted, and colour notes taken – I can paint it again if I want to from those pictures, and also with the photos for reference.
Typically I'll select one or two mushroom, pair them up with dry leaves, sticks and straws – and make a composition that works.
