Decades ago, I was given an antique oval frame with a faded portrait of an ancestor long gone and schlepped it from address to address until I realized that I could repurpose the gorgeous dark frame for a drawing. Sadly, the convex bubble glass, had a crack and I had to discard it.
The art that now lives in the frame started with an October walk through a section of the Appalachian Trail in Gardners, PA. There, I took a few reference shots of some mushrooms I saw, including these deadly Galerina or Funeral Bell. G. marginata occur in clumps and are the more deadly (thus the name) varieties of any number of seemingly interchangeable little brown mushrooms (LBMs). One of my fungi expert friends identified it for me— it has a distinctive walnut brown color, sheen on the cap, and paler cap margins.
While drawing, I enjoyed imagining a witch foraging for these (for some completely plausible reason) and a Toad appearing as a spirit guide to give a tour of his little kingdom in the woods. There was no preliminary sketch for the drawing; I worked out a composition right on the paper and solidified it as the drawing took shape.
What mushrooms are you finding in your woods?