morels on the brain bag, color pencil and marker by Anne Yen
is it true or false, watercolor by Anne Yen
Posts Tagged ‘mushroom painting’
It’s Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged false morels, morchella, morels, mushroom art, mushroom illustration, mushroom painting on May 6, 2011 | 4 Comments »
So Sure the Russula
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mushroom art, mushroom illustration, mushroom painting, Russulas, watercolor on April 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Russula, watercolor by Anne Yen
I love Russulas. There’s something so solid about them, something so sure. I love the colors of their caps, in all shades of warms and cools, atop a stout stem. There’s a certain lack of ambivalence about them that makes them so assuredly Russulas when you find them in the forest duff. Just don’t ask me to tell them apart by species. And as I learned last night at a New York Mycological Society talk by Noah Siegel, co-president of the Monadnock Mushroomers Unlimited in New Hampshire, some mushrooms (I forget which) we never considered as Russula, are indeed, thanks to DNA sequencing. According to the talk and recent science news in the media, DNA sequencing is rearranging relations of all kinds of taxa, resulting in renaming and rethinking of where things are on the evolutionary tree. Much confusion and head-scratching among the scientific community results. So maybe this post should be called, Not So Sure the Russula.
Regardless, Russulas are a fun way to indulge and experiment with rich colors when painting. And I will still be excited to find them in the urban forest.
Ceci n’est pas une Cortinaire
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mushroom illustration, mushroom painting, mushrooms for dinner on April 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Ha ha well wouldn’t you know it, I was completely wrong about my last post. I learned this after talking to Gary Lincoff yesterday about mushrooms that are emerging right now. He says it’s too early for Cortinarius to be coming up and that the cobwebby veils appear in other mushrooms as well. And given the timing and description of the mushroom, he thinks it’s more likely an Agrocybe or Psathyrella instead. So back to some investigating of this spring mushroom! I was gonna delete my last post because of the error but hey, such are the blunders and boo-boos of mushroom identification by a beginner. Hence the oft-heard warning, especially with mushrooms, never to eat anything you think is edible from the wild unless you’re absolutely certain of what it is.
So back to the drawing board, literally. These are some things I’m working on right now:
what I'm working on
Excited for spring, for sure! And tonight, some (store bought) mushrooms for dinner.
and for dinner tonight
Anybody Got Any Mushrooms Growing in Their Yard?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Fairy Ring mushrooms, Marasmius oreades, mushroom illustrating, mushroom painting, Seattle mushrooms on December 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Marasmius oreades, Fairy Ring Mushrooms from a Laurelhurst lawn, Seattle WA
In some parts of Seattle, people have grassy yards in front of their homes. At the conclusion of a work meeting last spring, when the boss says “anyone have anything left to say?”, I asked if anyone had any mushrooms growing in their yard that they wouldn’t mind me taking. Sure enough, some co-workers had mushrooms in their yards that they volunteered to give up so I swung by and plucked them. The best specimens I found of the yards I visited were the Marasmius oreades or Fairy Ring mushroom. This was a good mushroom to ID as a beginner, though of course, it was a challenge still. But once I took a spore print and keyed it out, I set out to paint it for one of my final Botanical Illustration projects.
Marasmius oreades, Fairy Ring Mushrooms posing to be painted
They struck a pose nicely and stayed quite still for me to paint. Inspired by traditional Chinese scroll paintings, I added icons in the form of stamps, pretending it was a page from a simplified mushroom ID book. The icon stamps mean, from top left clockwise is: white spore print, long stem, umbonate cap, and grows in grass.
Fairy Ring mushroom watercolor by Anne Yen, © 2009 Anne Yen
I still do that now, look in people’s yards for mushroom growth. Even here in Brooklyn, some homes have yards, even if they’re postage-stamp sized. I’ll ring the door to ask for permission to remove a few sample mushrooms and usually the occupants are just confused. They never noticed the mushrooms in the first place. “Go wild”. “Take them all”. Okeedokes I will, thanks!
