#SketchbookRevival2019 #TamaraLaporte Phantasmagorical Reality: Mushrooms

Study nature closely and you will discover forms that are more fantastic than anything you may imagine or create!

One example is the morphology of fungi. I created an entire village out of the shapes of mushrooms that I found in a guide book.

The village was inspired by a lesson on Sketchbook Revival 2019 with Tamara Laporte. Of course, her lesson did not include mushrooms. My Nature Journaling influences my creativity and my creativity influences my Nature Journaling!

Close-ups of sketch before watercolors added.

Nature Journaling about mushroom forms. My fellow Master Naturalist and Journalist, Carol, is my inspiration for putting so many little 'shrooms on one page. 

Ink and watercolor in my Jane Davenport Canvas Journal.

#SketchbookRevival Day 8 Mandalas and Patterns

Happy May Day Mandala! 

Reviving my daily sketchbook practice with Jane Snedden Peever http://www.jspcreate.com/meet-jane/

Micron Pen and VeriThin Prismacolor Colored Pencils in Strathmore 400 Series Field Watercolor Journal.

Start with a grid to base your design on (supplied by Jane).

I placed the grid under a page in my journal and used a graphite pencil and an eraser to establish a repeating pattern based on the circle divided into 6 sections.

Next, I traced over the pencil lines with a Micron Pen 05. 

I gently erased the pencil marks. Before using Prismacolor Verithins to add color. I chose them because their hard thin core makes coloring small spaces a breeze.

#SketchbookRevival Day 4 with Wendy Hollender Seasonal Botanicals: Tulip Tree Buds

The theme for Day 4 of the Sketchbook Revival with Karen Abend is to invite Nature into your sketchbook. The prompt from Wendy Hollender is to use watercolor and colored pencil to sketch a botanical specimen and to learn about the plant by adding notes.

I only put down one layer of watercolor and one layer of colored pencil and then I added some lines with black ink. (Strathmore 400 Series Field Watercolor Journal) That's not exactly how the lesson goes - but that is more or less my style.

I added some notes:

Liriodendron tulipifera

1. The bilateral halves of the leaf blade are folded into a flag-like outline at the leaf emergence.

2. Distinctive rounded stipules occur at the base of each petiole (3) on the young leaves. They abscise during the summer.

4. Terminal bud is valvate (duck-billed).

5. Lateral buds are smaller.

6. Leaf scar.

7. Circling stipule scars.