Year of Sucking: Mushroom Boot Camp

From stick people to fairy worlds

NOTE: This is part of occasional updates on my Year of Sucking At Watercolour, teaching myself how to see storytelling as a slower, jucier process that requires lots of pausing, screwing up, relearning, and a few full-on fails.

Let’s just jump right in here and boldly state the obvious: Who doesn’t love a cute mushroom? Since my days of long morning walks in Vancouver Island forests with my wee babes (now adult children), I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the magical qualities of forest fungi.

I’m quite confident that the mushroom-adoring crowd is wide and deep. They pop up in the cutest of places. And, when I started thinking about learning to paint more charming and nature details after a round of painting a few weeks ago, mushrooms seemed the best place to start.

This has marked a pretty big moment for me, TBH. I have always been in the “I draw stick people” camp of makers. That’s why watercolour works for me - nature, not people. However, after several really sucky attempts at trying to draw plants and other details, I knew that I could not skip the drawing thing.

So, I put myself through what I call Mushroom Boot Camp. It has been a week of drawing and painting these lovelies. Here is the highlights reel:

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Early on in the week, I started with this tutorial from Charizze T:

Some of the mushroom painting went ok, some went well, some I tossed. I discovered that I didn’t really know how to make certain lines and create shapes. Shading is a whole other monster. They were super fun, and a few felt like magic to paint.

I wanted more.

I accidentally came across Michele from The Creative Cove while searching for YouTube tutorials and totally fell in love with her mushroom line drawings.

DRAWINGS. What could I possibly be thinking. I am a stick man person. But, unable to resist the urge and remembering that I am not trying to be a champion at this, just making art and learning how to make art, and often sucking at it, I jumped in.

Michele is my kind of teacher, with instruction like, “Make a frowny face.” and “Make a half smile.” That sort of thing I understand. I drew and drew and drew, then drew some more.

I even tried out her mushroom fairy houses tutorial:

They were SO MUCH FUN.

After, my daughter said they definitely needed a wash of paint. I asked my husband (the professional artist in the house) and he said they really needed to be inked first, but that I should try a coffee wash.

More experimenting!

So, I inked them (which I fell in love with) and coffee stained them.

And, couldn’t resist making a video about the process.

To be honest, the most fun part of all of this is that I am just playing around. It’s not to sell or anything like that. I’m just seeing what happens, and that makes it relaxing, playful, and super exciting when a technique works for me.