In a bid to hold onto the last of this years sunshine (before winter completely sets in) I decided to see if I could find anything magical to photograph and while out in the wilderness I found a very lovely little patch of grassland fungi! These beautiful mushrooms were tiny and their colours seemed so vivid against the green of the grass. I love fungi there are so many species and colours and they grow in the most unlikely places.

So, enjoy some wild foraging photography…and a few doodles…

This is one of my favorites from the shoot. I love how simple and stock-photography-like it looks. The way the light hits the mushroom and the sunlight through the grass just feels so natural…

Now I know never to eat mushrooms I find, I don’t even like to touch them – unless I’m with someone who genuinely knows what they’re doing! Let’s be honest I just like to photograph and draw them so I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of photographs to show off the beauty of these amazing little fungi.

There are several types of waxcaps – some of the most amazing fungi you’ll stumble across. The grassland fungus earns its name because of its waxy top (as well as being really slimy in wet weather) and some waxcaps are protected – so as with all fungi finding, it’s best to look but not touch.

According to an ancient Greek myth, Perseus on his way back from a journey, to drink the water of a river he used hat of a mushroom.

I love this really simple pencil drawing it capture the organic and natural flow of the shrooms. Mushrooms are often smooth, but look at the texture of them up close, the frills underneath are tiny and imperfect but have uniformity at the same time.

A useless fact about shrooms – Portabello mushrooms, button mushrooms, and white mushrooms are all the same mushrooms at different levels of maturity and In the Middle Ages people thought mushrooms grew at night on the soil where witches had had a sabbath.

As I had my notebook handy I sat and drew a few, the first is using marker pen and really needs to be coloured red! The centre one was created using a bamboo stick and black acrylic paint and the third one is Windsor & Newton Indian ink and water. Its amazing how the same subject matter looks different depending on the medium used to capture it.

Something I really like about this shoot is the natural and uncomplicated colour scheme paired with lots of contrast and texturing. For instance, there are several different parts of the photo on the right that are in focus, the cream of the fungi, the smooth green blades of grass and the rough texture of the twigs.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures.

Thanks so much for reading, have a great weekend.