Amanita print.

Not sure if I posted about this painting on here when I first did it, but it's my first finished watercolour painting of an Amanita muscaria mushroom, and Shaun and I have just made prints of it. You can read more about it and order them from our paypal store over at Lepus Luna. 

Art Sabbatical

So I've been away for a little while, having just taken a month off from tattooing so I'd have an opportunity to work on my personal art for a bit, and I was hoping to return with all sorts of new achievements and some personal paintings to show off. Frustratingly, my art sabbatical didn't quite go as planned, and despite the fact that I did nothing for a whole month other than sit in my little 'office' and draw/paint/read/take notes, I actually accomplished very little; most of the drawings I did are now filling up my recycling bin. All I really have to show for that time, aside from a notebook full of ideas that are primarily still half-baked, are three pieces, two of which were in the works before I took my break. The first piece I finished was a coloured pencil  illustration of my belly dance teacher Melusina, which she intends to use for a new business card and website:

While I am actually happy with how this turned out, the process of creating it was an epic disaster from start to finish, and it ate up an entire week of my break as a result. This image was in fact my third attempt, because I started two before it that both failed for various reasons, the main one being the paper I used. I won't go into a boring rant about art paper here because it's really not very interesting, but I will say that I have now learned a few painful lessons about the importance of choosing the right paper for my art work, and this drawing was the first. The second lesson was delivered during the final stages of the next piece I completed, which was another Amanita Muscaria mushroom:

You can't actually tell from this photo, but the paper in all the dark areas around the cap of the mushroom is torn to little shreds due to the paper being too soft for intensive pencil work. It's not a complete disaster because it's only by looking at the original in direct light that it shows - but it's still a massive bummer after 20+ hours of work, and it renders the original unsuitable for exhibiting. From now on, no matter what anybody tells me, I shall refuse to draw on anything less than Arches cotton rag watercolour paper - the only paper I've ever been truly happy with, and seemingly the only one that can withstand all the layers of burnishing and erasing required for this kind of pencil work. This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish I'd gone to art school, so maybe I'd know what the hell I'm doing.

So just in case those previous disasters weren't enough, I also ruined probably the best drawing I've ever done, and one that my botanical drawing teacher was hoping I would exhibit next year:

That stain there is coffee that dripped from a spray bottle I use for doing coffee washes on my paintings, and in all likelihood, it's never coming off. Be very glad you weren't all here to see the sad, teary tantrum I threw when I discovered that this had happened. I swear there's some kind of curse attached to my artwork because this kind of thing seems to happen to just about everything I do. Over the course of many years I've had art stolen, water damaged while in a gallery,  pissed on by my cat, and thrown in the bin (thanks Mum) along with all the indignities I seem determined to subject it to. Sometimes I think it's remarkable that I even persist with making it.

So anyway, as for my third accomplishment, that didn't quite go as planned either...but I've grown to expect that now so it wasn't such a big deal. I actually feel ok with how this one came up in the end, and the only real issue I had was due to an experiment I tried with using a sepia toned black ink rather than straight black.

(I'll get a better photo of this soon.) For this sort of work I always outline and shade the whole painting with varying dilutions of indian ink, then paint over that with watercolour; I thought using sepia would give the whole image a sort of subtle warmth, but in reality it just muddied the colours and meant I had to paint over a few bits with opaque ink, which is kind-of a no-no in watercolour painting. But who gives a shit, right?

This is the first in a series of paintings I'm working on that are based on poisonous/healing/visionary plants and the folklore surrounding them. Some of you nerds out there (I'm looking at you, Jeanne) will recognise these flowers as Wolfsbane, more commonly known as Monkshood, which is one of the most poisonous plants in the world. The mythology surrounding Wolfsbane includes everything from people using it to kill wolves, to people using it to protect themselves from werewolves, and most excitingly to me, people using it to become werewolves. The idea that witches practised lycanthropy by donning wolfskins and employing toxins from magical plants may seem far-fetched, but it's certainly a more interesting and inspiring reality than the one I encounter most days, so I'm choosing to indulge in it.

Aside from this excellent book I've been reading, I think some of my love for themes of this kind comes from one of my all-time favourite movies, Altered States, in which the main character experiments with altered states using psychedelics and isolation tanks. In one particularly memorable scene, he reverts back to a primitive being and breaks into the local zoo where he kills and eats an animal with his bare hands. For the uninitiated:



Ken Russell is fucking awesome.

So aside from doing the above pieces, I also started a series of drawings for another new series based on cats, sketched out some ideas for a potential folklore-themed flash set, received this extremely beautiful Austin Spare print from Shaun for my 30th birthday, and became infatuated with the Legendary Pink Dots. Some more stuff has happened since then, but it can wait for another post.

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.

Ploughing the Clouds

Ok, so this is part one of my blog post about mushrooms, because there’s too much stuff to cram into a single post. For a fair while now I have been becoming gradually more and more obsessed with a particular species of mushroom called the Amanita Muscaria. It’s the one everyone will recognise as the archetypal red-and-white spotted toadstool from children’s stories and cheesy goblin art, and up until the last few years I had no idea that they are in fact hallucinogenic.

Not only that, but an investigation into the history of their use reveals that they have been suggested by various scholars, academics and mushroom enthusiasts as the possible basis of many religious and shamanic traditions, up to and including Christianity.  As with most literature concerning the use of magic mushrooms, there is much to be gained from contemplating these ideas  (if only the willingness to think open mindedly) , but probably some to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe.

painted ceiling in a German church, 1192 AD.

I’m currently in the midst of wading through countless websites and books on these mushrooms, which I simply cannot read fast enough. It all started a couple of years ago with a story that was relayed in Daniel Pinchbeck’s excellent book Breaking Open the Head in which a man named Robert who identifies as a ‘plant shaman’ eats three Amanitas that were growing in his garden. To abbreviate the story somewhat, he is greeted by three anthropomorphic Amanita mushrooms, ranging from three feet high to five feet high. They ask him why he ate them, and seemingly satisfied with his answer about following a dream he had they promptly vanish. When one of Robert’s friends ate Amanitas some years later, he experienced the exact same thing but when asked why he ate them he replied “I was trying to get high” to which the mushrooms said “well, if you ever do this again, we’re going to kill you.”

 handmade mushroom toy by cart before the horse.

The next thing to really pique my interest was the connection between these mushrooms and our modern Christmas celebrations. I’m not convinced as some mushroom fanatics seem to be that the entire story of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer can be explained by the historic use of Amanitas by shamans and reindeer in ancient Europe, but there’s definitely something to it. For a crash course in this theory, check out this article from a not-at-all questionable source. This book looks promising but I haven’t bought it yet:

 

More on the Christmas thing later.

I read this self-published book over Easter, and while I found it slightly disappointing in its inability to provide a solid explanation for the connection between toads and ‘toadstools’ (beyond them both being poisonous/hallucinogenic), it did have some excellent information about each, including historical accounts of their use in witchcraft and shamanism (same thing really), and personal accounts of toad venom trips. The Amanita is covered quite extensively.

I’ve only just read the opening few pages of Peter Lamborn Wilson’s book Ploughing The Clouds, which focuses on the Amanita’s possible cult use in ancient Ireland. Get a load of that cover! You don’t even need to open the book to know it’s gonna be good. Plus, it’s Peter Lamborn Wilson.

I’ve also started on this one by John M Allegro, but it’s dry and heavy going, and possibly a wee bit silly. Possibly.  As one Amazon reviewer says: “It is a work of sheer genius. It is also absolute nonsense.”  I’m yet to be persuaded either way, although some of the ideas presented in this book are discussed on this website in a remarkably convincing (if slightly batshit) manner. There are a number of books available now that build on Allegro’s controversial themes, which I shall investigate in time.

And of course, Dale Pendell, my favourite writer on all things poisonous,  includes a chapter about Amanita Muscaria in volume three of his Pharmako series, Pharmako/Gnosis in which he says “What is most remarkable about our Scarlet Woman is her power to bewitch from afar – you never have to touch her (much less eat her) to fall under her spell.”  Somehow this is ringing true to me right now. I may or may not have started collecting things that are red with white spots because they remind me of these mushrooms.

Next on my to read list: a classic text on this subject, of which I’ll be forced to buy an expensive second hand copy.

And a book that marries two of my favourite themes right now, shamanism and fairy-tales, with allegedly a fairly big emphasis on (bias towards?) mushroom use. This should follow on nicely from The Prose Edda which I also just finished…but that’s for another post.

Next up will be some photos from my trip to Adelaide where I got to draw some Amanitas from life in my friend’s garden.