MUSHROOMS ON PAPER

There's been a while since I last time saw a real, living mushroom here where I live. While browsing through various communities here, and seeing plenty of fungi stuff, I started feeling some kind of mushroom nostalgia, so I decided to do some drawings to cure that.

These robust, bolete-like mushrooms were the first thing I drew for My contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkaw. I didn't have any particular species in mind. No picture or real mushrooms in front of me while drawing. It seems that of all mushrooms, the generic boletes have the strongest presence in my memory. Although, since the downside of the caps isn't visible, there's no evidence that these are actually boletes. Could be some other thing that looks like them but has gills instead of that typical spongy, bolete stuff under the cap. The original is just a simple ball pen drawing on orange paper. The other colors, or more like different shades, and the background texture were added in Photoshop.

I photographed the drawings, unloaded the photographs into the computer, and then continued playing and experimenting in Photoshop.

Here you can see a monochrome version with the same enlarged mushrooms in the background.

Here I was playing with some distortions, and more layers are added. While doing this, and switching between the two versions, I realized that with more sequences this could be a cool little GIF.

So I created it. Here you can see that GIF with mushrooms in motion. 😃 You can use it in your yoga practice - watch it and breathe ... just breathe ... synchronize with the inflating - deflating shrooms ...

I had no more ideas after the GIF, so I decided to draw something new. Something that could add more diversity to the post. Here I draw some more mushrooms that ended up memorized through the years. One of them could be the Chanterelle. The biggest one could be some Amanita. The other two - are some small mushrooms that grow on the leaf litter. Since the drawings didn't look very good, I used the invert option in Photoshop to make the thing look visually slightly more appealing. In the following picture ...

... I added more colors to the scene.

After that, it was time to make things move a bit, so I created another GIF. With that done, when I took the pen to continue my drawing adventure, the realism somehow evaporated from my mind ...

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... and the ordinary mushrooms started turning into creatures.

Here I added a bit of psychedelic vibe to these mushroom-like aliens.

This is the last drawing. Just another generic mushroom surrounded by fallen leaves.

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Here you can see all the original drawings in one place.

AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE ARTWORKS ARE MY WORK - THE END.