Lots of Mushroom Studies

(Click any image to see it enlarged.)

The painting above I did while following a Youtube video, something I’ve never done before. It was fun to try colors and techniques that someone else was doing. Mine came out very different because I played around with making the speckled spots with my own technique of dropping water onto the paint. What I liked also was the idea of using gouache to paint the background, something I never tried before. I did mine in the blue tones, lighter towards the bottom. It’s good practice to do in gouache, which are harder to keep even and flat looking. I thought the blue would offset the orangey tones in the mushroom caps.

I like taking pictures of mushrooms when we go out walking and love doing studies from them. Over the years I’ve paid a bit of attention to the different types but have never really gotten into learning the various families of fungi. Some people go nuts learning what mushrooms are edible, I would NEVER go that far! But I would like to learn at least the different groups. The study above is just made up, not from a real mushroom. It uses similar colors that were used in the study from the video, I noted them next to the study so I can refer back to it if needed later. I think the best thing I learned was using sepia, usually such a dark color, very watered down, was perfect for the ‘mushroom’ color of the stem.

The study above was really fun to do. I thought I’d try using purples for shadows and let it get quite vibrant. The oranges of the cap really sing with the purples next to them! I used “Moonglow” by Daniel Smith, in the darker shadows. This is a great color to lay in shadows, as it’s pretty toned down in chroma, or dull. I liked putting the bright yellow on the right which really glows. I used Lunar Blue and Mayan Blue (both Daniel Smith) for the blues on the ground, mostly just to play with them as I don’t use them much.

The studies above are all on the same sheet, what a fun time I had doing these! I put color swatches next to each one and labeled them, so I can refer back to them as reference. These mushrooms are all from photos of real mushrooms, only the bottom right one is from my own garden, the rest were just images online.

The mushroom above is a “Spectacular Rustgill”. I really like how the cap looks, especially where it’s been chewed on. I used the purple “Moonglow” as the shadow under the cap.

This is a “Meadow Waxcap”, another one I’ve never seen in real life.

Two more of the “Spectacular Rustgill” mushrooms, well three if you count the teeny one at the base. I like how this one came out with the shadows and colors.

The study above was from a photo I took in the vegetable garden. While weeding under the brassicas I saw these tiny mushrooms and snapped some pictures using my cell phone. I had to get on my elbows to get close enough, and as usual suffered some pretty muddy patches on my coat. I like the fragility of these tiny types of mushrooms and the way the color streaks down the cap. They really were very tiny and delicate.