Magical crystals, unicorn, witch flowers and dark omens

In the weeks before Halloween, I have a mixed bag of art and styles that isn't sticking strictly to the black and orange pumpkin theme. I've been through a few phases lately, so I present these here just as a sampling of some art that is currently available. Watercolors in shades of blue, pink and purple; unicorns; dragons, psychedelic and gothic ladies; and a new favorite style of mine which is to create a "cabinet of curiosity" style assemblage in a painting featuring bones, shells, rocks, crystals, insects, plants and other oddities and pleasantries.

Here are a few new items, both originals and prints (prints are available if the original painting sold) before I crack down on putting together a grouping of Halloween-specific items!

After the hurricane

Back up in New Jersey in time to help out with hurricane preparations, I was plastering patches on the wall where water was getting in, in the basement, until late last night to try to minimize damage. As it turns out very little water got in down there except, of course, in the room where my things are being stored. Fortunately they were all up on shelves or tables, or in plastic tubs, so the puddle of water that leaked into that room did not damage anything of interest or value.

And today, giant mushrooms were already growing in the back yard!

We didn't even lose power, though I had prepared tons of raw veggie food items and a lot of non-perishables, in case we did, since we don't have any non-electric cooking devices - not even a camping stove.

Yesterday I did a small painting to pass some time, based on the popularity of this print in my shop I thought I'd start doing some small ghost bottle paintings. Here is the first, "Elixir of Arminta." I need to get more small canvases, but when I do, expect more...

Also, here is a scan of the painting that I repainted last week, since I didn't have a scanner at my disposal when I finished it. I think the scan shows the colors much better than the photo did, since they are very vivid and bold here. The photo shows the colors in natural sunlight, but the scan more accurately represents how it looks indoors I think.

another shortcut to more mushrooms

Nothing quite compares to the summer two years ago, but it's been raining so much in the Mushroom Woods (which is what I call a particular county park, because I see so many varieties there) that I knew they had to be popping up this year, maybe even a little ahead of schedule.

My posts back in 2009, like the original Shortcut to Mushrooms post, show an interesting array of groovy fungus that grew up in the damp earth that year. I even took a variety of photos of them that I offer prints of, like this one.

This year they haven't gone completely wild yet but I will take a break from shawls for a moment to show a few things that I saw today on a rainy woods walk.

I love these red-capped fellows. This one is just peeking up, looking around to see if anyone is there.

These wee yellow ones were much brighter in person but I do what I can when the light is dim to try to capture it.

Just some regular ol' brown mushrooms but still cute enough for a hobbit!

Oh and as a side note, I love tulip trees but they are so tall that you can almost never actually see the "tulips" until they fall to the ground and are squashed. So I was happy to find a low-hanging branch with some of the flowers intact on it. So strange and waxy and almost tropical looking!

Mystery yarn and lots of rain

It has rained nonstop for a week in New Jersey, where I have been during that time, after not seeing rain for quite awhile. Here on the tree stumps in her back yard, mushrooms are going crazy. Alongside this broken stone bird head it looks like we planned it, to look rustic. But we didn't, we just haven't been keeping up with the yard. I was hoping to get some outdoor work done up here, cleaning out the shed and organizing my possessions that are stored therein.

After a mostly dry season last year I am starved for mushrooms to photograph! The strangest thing in the back yard though was the fact that all of my boxes in her wooden shed seemed to be full of Rose of Sharon seeds. The things grow like weeds in the yard, but there weren't any IN the shed. There weren't any ABOVE the shed. How on earth did the seed pods manage to worm their way into my shoes, boxes and any sort of containment device, in the shed? It is a mystery to me. More on mysteries in a moment.

Now, on to blue things. Isn't it interesting when you can see the moon during the daytime?

Last week I got some mill-end yarn at AC Moore, a bag of five skeins of this stuff. Here's where the mystery is...I can usually identify any mill-end yarn because I spend an irrational amount of time in yarn stores and I know what brands usually wind up in the mill-end bin. I even recognized that they had Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn! there, which was surprising since they don't even have Hobby Lobby around here. Which is a store that I love, because how can you not?

So here is the mystery yarn. Help identifying it would be greatly appreciated! Each skein is pretty hefty, and I've test knitting enough to know it's probably fingering weight. Using #4 needles I got about nine rows to the inch, and 29 stitches on the needle made it 4 inches wide. So that is 29 sts x 36 rows = a 4-inch square. But that was unblocked, stretched slightly.

The mill-end bags say it could contain anything from acrylic to nylon to wool, and I think that judging by the way it feels and knits up -- and sticks to itself I'm untangling it -- it must be at least part wool. I couldn't get it to "spit join" when I tried to felt it by rubbing the ends together wet, but to be fair I've never been able to get 100% wool to do that either.


Oh pretty skeins, what are you? How much of you is there? If this is fingering weight, then these are about the size of a ball of Noro sock yarn, which would mean there could be 300 or even 400 or more yards per ball.

So to test it out I am knitting the Out of My Head Shawlette -- or at least starting it, we'll see how it goes -- which uses less than 400 yards. So it won't take long and will be a good test of how the colors stripe out and if it blocks. If I can wet block it successfully to make the lace pattern set neatly, then I will be pretty sure it has wool content and I can make a larger, more complicated piece out of the rest. And I will know if I have 2000 yards of the stuff!

The last mushrooms of fall

I took pictures of the last mushrooms of the year, on Thanksgiving, but I did not get a chance to post until just now!

It was unusually warm on that day, probably around 60 degrees which is very warm for late November here. I didn't expect there to still be mushrooms growing in the woods, but there they were...not the vivid shades of July, no bright reds or sulfurous yellow, no garish blues and purple or strange mossy greens.

Though a few still spring strange and corpsy, smooth waxy curves of flesh protruding from the cold bark of trees.

There's a flourish of strange orange-yellow color among the rotting leaves though.

And the flaky purple fungi creeping up this log, looks rather like oyster shells.

See how big they are in comparison to my green glittery nails!

Can't get me out of the woods

It was unusually warm today, around 70, which means that once everything else was under control there was time to check out the woods department. Most of the trees are bare except for some yellow maple leaves. The 'timer' on my camera isnt' really working anymore, can you tell?

After a summer of nonstop mushroom photography (I say that as someone who is not a professional photographer, mind you, just a random weirdo with a barely-functional cheap digital camera) I was happy to still be able to find a few of the little guys, peeping out from beneath rotting leaves. Lots of critters came out today -- lots of bright green leaf bugs and spidery friends.

Bright green moss is so beautiful! It was the only spot of green in the forest (other than those bugs) but it's so lovely.

Spider ahead!...
This guy was actually huge, for New Jersey -- we're not known for our enormous spiders, but he was as big as I've seen them. This was the only picture that came out clear though! After some research I think he's a pretty normal garden spider, but I've never seen a bright neon orange one before. Looking up spiders online, it looks like he might be an orange marbled orb spider (or some combination of words thereof) but I say that as a wild guess. The Clueness Naturalist strikes again.

Bought some more canvases on sale today, so it's back to my indoor activities now!

Absurdly nice October day

First, a very big thank you to http://www.jewelrybytarabiz.blogspot.com/ for featuring me on her blog today! She has a wonderful blog with regular features on artists and crafters, and her etsy shop is full of positively amazing stuff!!

It was almost comically pleasant outside today -- the kind of day where you pretty much have to just cancel everything and spend the entire day outside. The leaves aren't really in their autumn colors yet, though some that turned early were already blown off. But the rest are still mostly summer green, though starting to brown around the edges. In the woods there is already a thick carpet of gold beech and birch leaves.

Mushroom hunting is a little more difficult because of the thickening layer of leaves on the forest floor. The Psychedelic Slug painting in this post has been marked down temporarily to mark the end of the forest mushroom season. (and again, I note, I never pick mushrooms, I only photograph them...do not disturb your fungi friends!)

Above, you see some growing on a log at Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve last week. Below, from Clayton Park this week. Just out of frame there was a fuzzy white and black caterpillar inching along. Some internet research suggests they were destined to become Hickory Tussock Moths. I saw several in the forest in the same vicinity. They kept wanting to crawl onto the path that is often traveled by bikes so I moved them back off the trail. Reading up on them I see that some people can have bad allergic reactions to handling them. I did not have a reaction, but I just let them crawl onto a finger and quickly moved them out of the line of the path...but I should try to remember that bright white and black marked things with spines jutting out of them, might just be trying to send a "do not touch" message.


It's funny, because I had just been reading the horror story "Couching at the Door" by D.K. Broster, which deals with someone who is haunted by something long and furry that resembles a feather boa or caterpillar. So seeing furry caterpillars everywhere was in keeping with my mindset -- rather like the time I read "The Willows" while traipsing through a swampy area with willows growing everywhere. Ahhhh, atmosphere!

real and illusory mushrooms

It's getting cooler out, but the summer of endless mushrooms continues. The mud is getting darker and thicker, the trees downed by lightning strikes in the summer are now covered with heavy fungus growth.


This strange procession of mushrooms up the trunk of a downed tree, were particularly striking. Again, I'm limited by the fact that photography is not my main pursuit in life so it's just dumb luck when I can get a picture in focus.


Then of course there are the illusory mushrooms. I was looking at my Indian bedspread with my glasses off, and I would have sworn that the patterns formed these strange spotted mushrooms. I liked that idea so I jotting it down before I lost the image. The owl and the hedgehog are purely gratuitous! But walking around with my glasses off might be a good way to come up with ideas for things to paint, now that I think about it.

More prints; matte are here!

I got my first few matte prints from iprintfromhome.com and I am quite happy with them. I am going to get some done of artwork to have them in stock, while I work on trying to recover my old files with my original art scans from 8+ years ago from an old computer. I have several glossy Halloween art prints, several glossy mushrooms, and four matte mushroom prints up now only for $5 or $6 on Etsy, unframed. They are all 5 x 7 inch prints. When I offer larger prints I will have them for higher prices, but this is sort of my introductory offer since I have been trying out different ways to make prints.

Anyway it's a start! I took more pictures today, but I'm hoping next year I will be able to have a better camera for low light macro photography, as I believe mushroom photography will be my one and only specialty when it comes to taking pictures. Maybe insects and flowers, depending on what kind of camera I wind up with. But that is really just something to do while I'm out on my walks -- painting is my main focus, and I have a lot of paintings I want to make prints from! I hope that people are interested in them since I know an original painting is not something people necessarily invest in on a whim.

That's all for now!

Of badgers and mushrooms

I was going to paint a badger and mushrooms anyway, so adding the snake in was gratuitous, I realize. But it did make me happy. :) Now on Etsy!

The little guy needs some views, I guess no one is searching on badger Halloween art today?? I can't imagine why! ;p

If you notice the trees in the background, the "one tree" and "three trees" are the symbols on my camera you push if you want to zoom in or out from a landscape. Speaking of which I took more pictures today, some really cool ones (well I can't tell yet because I haven't uploaded them...they looked good on the viewfinder though!) and I should have matte prints of a couple of my mushrooms in a couple of days. I am out of printer ink and couldn't afford both printer ink AND paper so I decided to just order a couple of prints from iprintfromhome.com to see what they look like, and decide from there how what kind of paper they look good on.

a shortcut to mushrooms

Just some more mushrooms!  Every time I go to this particular forest there is something new and exciting growing.  I don't have a very good camera -- in fact it didn't work at all until today something rattled loose and it sort of started to work sometimes, again.  I'm not really a photographer, though my father was a professional and my mom is also a photographer and takes really nice nature pictures.  I just specialize in mushrooms, because they sit still!!  I also took a picture of a tiny tiny toad but it was a little blurry.  I try to creep up on critters but I am very clumsy.  They seem to wait and pose for a minute but when I can't get a decent shot after a few tries they give up.  Sorry lady, you had your chance!

new scan of an older painting

This surreal dream rabbit is actually from a couple of years ago but when I first did it I was limited by my painfully old scanner and computer at the time and couldn't get a good image of it. I've had him in my home for awhile but I thought it was a good time to bring him out for another romp. I don't know why exactly he has parrot wings, but I called him "Rabbot" because he's...well, a combination of a rabbit and a parrot.




And because I haven't posted any photos in this blog yet that I can recall, one of my main hobbies in life -- this summer, at any rate -- is photographing mushrooms in the woods. I've always gone for woods walks on pretty much every day of the year that the weather allows, fitting them in after work before I go home if I can, on weekdays. This year the tremendous amounts of rain have meant just a ton of mushrooms. Everywhere. So I've taken several hundred photos of them. I'm not really a photographer though and my cheap camera recently broke, but I think mushroom season is almost over. I found a lot today though...some orange jellies...many delightful and beautiful things are in the soil.

Psychedelic Slug

I was going to try to tie this in with the season, but honestly, I just wanted to paint a slug on a mushroom. All summer I've been watching slugs feast happily on the many-colored mushrooms that are growing everywhere they can...it's been a great year for slugs! So to celebrate, here's just a cute little woodland scene. I love secondary colors -- green, purple and orange. I'll pretty much use any excuse to indulge them. Today, in walking through a wildflower preserve, I saw even more mushrooms and the slime trails of the friendly neighborhood slugs. I love critters!

This guy is on Etsy now, btw.

We're gonna sit at the welcome table

When I start a UFO cult, this will be the cover for the brochure. I don't know if we're been watching too many UFO documentaries on late night cable, or if it's listening to Ya Ho Wha 13 in the car or re-playing Katamari Damacy again on the Playstation, but apparently something has snapped and I think I might have joined a rainbow flower hippie alien gnome UFO flower mushroom cult at some point in the last 24 hours.

And just to confuse things a little, there's some Tarot card imagery, with the black and white trees in the background similar to the pillars in the High Priestess card, and various planetary symbols scattered throughout, on the staves that the alien and gnome friends are holding.

The mystic white-robed priestess welcomes the craft to earth with a crescent moon in one hand and a red star/pentacle in the other. She is draped with blue flowers, her robe adorned with moons and stars, and a rainbow of flowers blossom over her head. An eye in a pyramid, and a crown-like headpiece with a third eye on her brow, complete her ritual garb. The UFO projects rainbow beams in all directions. Welcome, Alien Friends!

This one is on Etsy.

Ghastly ghost flowers

This summer, it has been unusually rainy in New Jersey -- it rained almost every day in June, and July was unseasonably cool and damp as well. One of the results of this downpour has been the proliferation of every type of mushroom in the woods. And among the strange collection of yellow and brown amanitas, jelly molds and fungus, death caps and destroying angels, a strange flower blooms.

I walk in the woods almost every day that the weather cooperates, even if only for a few minutes, but I have never before seen the elusive Indian Pipe in one of my favorite walking places, though I have looked for them in the darkest shadows among the mushrooms. Pale and waxy, they resemble mushrooms themselves - a tiny cluster of pale white stems bearing drooping bell-like blossoms. Flecked with the dark soil from which they erupt after a heavy rain, they seem to favor woods like the one I frequent, full of birch and beech, pine and poplar.

Among their other names are ghost flower, corpse plant, and fairy smoke -- quite a poetic plant! With that in mind I imagined that at its roots a wan fairy might lie in wait beneath the earth. I will probably do several paintings on this theme, but this is the first. I haven't decided whether to offer her up for Etsy or eBay yet, but I wanted to share her right away.