Mushroom drawings part 1.

So this is how I spent my day yesterday. Probably close to 15 hours of it.

I had yet another all-day cancellation, and rather than try to find an appointment to fill it at the last minute I thought I’d stay home and draw. And I’m glad I did, because as luck would have it the mailman arrived early in the morning with an unexpected package for me, and it just happened to be an awesome drawing lamp my Mum had bought me with a daylight bulb in it and a magnifyer, which made the experience of drawing in my dingy little room a much nicer experience than it usually is.  Thanks Ma.

I think this is my best botanical drawing yet and it was loads of fun. (This is not a great photo but Shaun will be able to take a nice one later). A very pale, detailed line drawing with minimal shading was done from life in Adelaide a few weeks ago, and then I did the rest of the shading yesterday from reference photos that I took:

 
I’ve taken some artistic license with some of the shading and a few other things, like removing the little tears in the stem near the bottom because I like the ambience of the texture without them. One of the things I’ve really noticed, which is partly why you have to draw from life whenever possible rather than from photos, is that a camera lens simply cannot capture the same information that your eye is capable of taking in at any given time, so the photo references always differ a little from what you’ve drawn.
I think my next Amanita drawing is going to be in colour, either watercolour or coloured pencil. I really need to either get over my fear of paint, or switch to pencils altogether I think.  Either way, I’ll have more drawings to show you soon.