Creative Sketchbook Technique - Mushrooms

1. Intro and Class Project: Hi, my name is Jennifer Rice. I'm an artist and illustrator here in the Pacific Northwest. My love of mushrooms started when I was a kid and my dad would take me mushroom hiking in the foothills of the cascades. Every fall we would go out and hunt for shock trousers. I continue this tradition with my children and these times are some of my fondest memories. I love mushrooms so much. I even have an entire sketchbook dedicated to them. In this class, I show you how I break down the parts of a mushroom composition into Easy Pieces with this unique creative sketchbook technique, it's easy to create compelling artwork and sketches. I've created a workbook that walks you through each step of the process. You will learn each part of the mushroom and all of the different characteristics. You'll practice brainstorming and adding fun details and work on composition for your final project. I want you to put it all together and create a finished sketch using everything that you've learned about mushrooms. For this class, all you will need is a piece of paper and a pencil. You don't have to have a dedicated sketchbook, but you can, if you'd like. You can also download and print out the workbook and work directly in that. Or you can leave it online and use it as your reference. Come join me as we explore different combinations of mushroom compositions. 2. Mushroom Anatomy: We're gonna be going over the mushroom anatomy and the structure of the mushroom. I'm going to break down the mushroom into all of its parts. Not every mushroom has these parts, but it's helpful to be able to recognize all of these so that when you are identifying mushrooms or you're drawing mushrooms, you know what parts you want to add. We're gonna get the general outline of the mushroom here, and we're gonna start here with the cap. This is the part of the mushroom and we're gonna be going over the different shapes later on, I have a very handy diagram that will cover all of this. But for now I'm going to do the universal mushroom shape on top of the mushroom cap. Sometimes we'll have ports or scales, and these can be created as the mushroom is opening up and expanding, it creates these really fun little spots here that are really fun to add. In the typical mushrooms sketch that you see everywhere with the red top and white spots. That's what goes on top. Every mushroom down below the cap is gonna have some type of scale. So we're gonna add that in right here. And these are the gills. We have the ring skirt. This can go either up or down. You're going to draw it down here. It is actually a remnant from a partial veil that once covered the mushroom skills in it pops off and hangs out there. We have the stock, sometimes it's called the stem or the style of. These can be all different sizes and shapes and textures. I do have a diagram that breaks all of this down for you. Below that we have a vulva. It's the remnants of a universal veil. And not every mushroom has them. Sometimes it's fun to draw the little roots that are attached to the mushrooms when you pick them, sometimes you'll still see the mycelium. Those are just the little roots. This diagram is helpful for recognizing all the parts of the mushrooms. You can practice drawing it, or you can keep it handy for yourself as a reference so that you understand the anatomy and the structure of the mushroom moving forward, neck, the shapes of the mushroom caps. 3. Mushroom Caps: The first thing that we're gonna cover as we break down the mushroom anatomy and I give you all the parts and pieces to create your own Mushrooms, is we're going to cover the variety of shapes that mushroom tops come in. The first mushroom we're going to cover is the typical mushroom that you see when people sit down to draw mushroom, It's the convict shape. The next shape is the hemispherical shape, and it's more round. And that makes the mushroom a little bit thicker. We have the spherical shape, like a little ball on the end of the stem. This next shape is really interesting. It's called umbilicus. If you think of an umbilical cord and your belly button, There's a little divot in the top. You want to make sure that you get that in the shape. We have an ovoid shape. After that we have an uplifted. This means that you can see the gills, the top can be flat with the uplift to cheat, it can be funneled, which we'll go over in just a moment. We have an unbind eight next, which is kind of like a little hat. Love these little mushrooms and make these a lot in my sketches. And you'll find your favorite shapes as well. As you practice all of these two out into your sketches. We have the flat shape up next, which is a thick flat cap. Next we have the funnel shape and that is uplifted, but it also goes down in the middle. So if you've ever it looked at Sean trails are eaten, John Charles, you'll see that they are the funnel shape. Then we have the depressed shape which is like flat, which is kind of in-between a funnel and uplifted. It's not totally funneled in, but it has a divot in the top. The companionate. Love these little mushrooms. They look like little mushrooms to me. We have this really ruffled edge here. We have the soul injury, which is like a bullet shape. Then we have conical shape, which reminds me a lot of cardiac. Up next we're gonna cover words, scales, different types of gills, and linked skirt. 4. Gills and Ringskirt: The next portion of this chart is the warts or the scales. We can choose to add these or leave them off. And I'm going to show you what they look like. Warts are more raised and they are a kind of a 3D shape. They have a little bit of a shadow and they're just a little oblong. Scales on the other hand only lift up off the mushroom on the bottom side. So you're not going to want to draw the top mark, this little squiggly lines just like this. In mushrooms, you'll see three different types of guilds. I'm going to cover two here. Toothy Gil is not as common. When we're looking at the shapes of the gills. There are a variety of ways to draw the lines. When we look at the underside of many types of mushrooms, there's a variety from very far apart to very fine and tiny. Let's draw those out. In this first section. We have gills that are similar to Sean trials. They're very far apart and they're a little bit forked. The second section here, they are a bit closer together. The third section, they're even closer together. And this last section, they're tiny, they're so fine, you can barely even draw them. Then when we look at the underside of some mushrooms, we see pores instead of gills. There are three distinct types of pores. We have larger pores. We have medium-size, and then we have very fine. Again, let's take a look at the chart here. As far as the ring skirts go, There's a wide variety of ways to draw these, but we're going to focus on the direction today. I'm going to draw one of these rings group is pointing down and one of these rings skirts pointing up. I've included all of these things in the chart. And when you go through it, it will be really easy to pick and find the features that you want to add to your mushrooms can be pointing in any different direction. So let's look at what that looks like. When we have our gills pointing down. We want to start our Gil lines from the middle and point them down. You can see they're radiating out from the center. And it really gives that illusion of depth going up into that mushroom cap. When we have the gills pointing up, you're going to want to leave a little semicircle at the top of the stem right here and point the gills up from that to the mushroom cap. I've also included the flatness in here, which is in-between down and up, and has the same concept as well. Next, we'll cover all the different textures and shapes of the stamp. 5. Stems: Alright, so I have your chart here that I created for you and we're now in the stem size section. I'm not going to draw those out. You know how to draw small, medium, and large stems. Let's work on the stem textures. The first kind of texture that is very predominant in mushrooms. We're gonna be looking at the scales on these stems. They can come in small, medium, large, anywhere in-between. I'm going to show you what that looks like. They point up and they point down, choose which way you want them to go. There's a variety of ways to draw them. Here's the small ones pointing up and down. Then we've got medium. With this one, I'm gonna grab my pencil here and show you, it's easier to sketch these out with a pencil first if you're going to be adding these scales in, because the edge of the scale is going to overlap the edge of the stem to create the look of depth that we're looking for. Drivers scales first. Then you can draw out your edges right here, like how I'm doing. This gives just a little bit of extra volume and depth to your sketches. Let's try pointing down. Same technique here. I've got my pencil doing the edges, little squiggly lines here. And then what I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go back over it with my pen and just really define these skills. Last one, we've got large scales. Same idea as before. I'm going to get my pencil and I'm going to sketch out my scales, really sticking them out from the edge so they look like They're flaring out, kind of peeling off the edge of the mushroom. Then again, I'm going to go back over with my pen and define. Is there a little bit better so you can see what's going on. Moving onto some of the other stem textures in the chart, we've got our vertical lines. When I'm drawing my vertical lines here, I like to leave a little spots where the line doesn't continue on. It gives variety and texture to the stem that you wouldn't get if you were just drawing straight lines up and down. Try to be random as I'm leaving these little gaps and just really adds something extra. Next one you can do something similar but make the chunks a little bit shorter. This kinda keep gives it more of a scaly look, just a different look to your mushroom so you can mix it up and make the stems look different and not do the same texture on all of the stems. This one here, I've got curving, the contour lines a little bit around the stem. This works really well on the skinny stems. I liked putting them on there. I don't have a lot of room for other texture, but this still gives you an idea of the shape of the stem and gives it some form, texture and variety. Then this last one here is more stylized version of maybe skills or just a way to fill in the stem without having to think about what attributes are doing. Next. When we look at the chart, we have our stem shapes. So let's go over them. We have our tapered stems. A good majority of mushroom stems are going to taper off. There gonna be a little bit wider at the bottom and they are at the top. If you're ever in doubt, draw a tapered up with the bottom pattern than the top. However, they do taper down with the top being fatter than the bottom. There's also a stem type that's routing that tapers down and actually goes down to a little root. Next we have the bulbous shape, which comes down and then widened significantly at the bottom like a bulb. Then we have the club shape, which is similar to the bulbous shape. Finally, we have the equal stem, which doesn't change in width on its way down. It is the same as the top as it is down at the bottom. There's a lot of variety you can add to your stems that creates a lot of wonderful mushrooms. Up next we're going to cover the vulva and the mycelium, which finishes the very bottom of your mushroom. 6. Volva and Mycelium: We've got our full vi here, which some mushrooms have in some mushrooms down, I've often is a remnant of the universal veils. But when it was opening up, part of that covered the whole mushroom. And as it opened up fruiting, it split. And when it's sitting down there at the base, That's what that is. Not all mushrooms have them. It's a little cup down there at the bottom of the mushroom. You can also choose to add the mycelium, which are the little roots. Sometimes when you are out mushroom hunting or you pick some muffins that they still have those fine little roots attached. Now that we've covered each part of the insurance, I hope you have a good working understanding of how to put together each of these shapes. Don't forget to download the workbook and practice in the areas that I have created for you. Up next, we're going to go over some added details that you can add to your mushroom sketches to add interest and details to your final composition. 7. Adding Fun Details: I put together a sheet of some of my favorite details that I like adding to my mushroom sketches. I'm going to go over a few of them, but absolutely come up with your own doodles and details that you like adding. Feel free to create your own page that has your own design elements that you can refer to again and again. I'm gonna go over a few of my favorite elements and give you a few examples. I like drawing leaves and grass and little flowers. I like drawing little branches. You can have your leaves opposite each other, or you can alternate them on the stem. For added interest. When you're drawing your leaves, you can make some leaves go up behind. Some other leaves. Make little acorns, grass, or even this little pine branch. Some animals are also fun to add into some compositions. I'll show you my favorite easy way to add a fraud. Of course, you can also add snails. And I like adding bugs. Remember that your sketches don't have to look perfect when you first sketch them out. But the whole point of having a sketchbook, crystals are really fun to add in. And when I add a crystal in to a composition, I like to tuck it back behind the mushroom. The mushroom is the main part of the composition. So I'll stick it off of the edge of the mushroom, kind of like this and then add my additional elements around it. Another thing that's really fun and pretty important to know how to draw when you're doing mushrooms is Moss. There's a high chance that you're going to want to add Moss At some point to some of your mushroom compositions. Here's some of my favorite ways of drawing moss. Last what I want to go over because it can be a little bit more of a complicated shape. Or some feathers. Feathers are really fun to add in the background. Down on the ground. They're just a really great design element that really catches the eye. So when you're drawing a feather, it can be easier to draw it in with pencil first to get the general shape and then add your details. And then with my pencil we're going to draw a V from the bottom. We're going to come up and then taper and then do another inverted V at the top. This is going to be our general feather shape. Then when we go back in with pen, we can add the extra details. Let me show you that again. You can have the feather V up from the shaft and B flat on the top. One more shape that's really fun, is kind of a more downy feathers. Again, we're going to start with the shaft and we're going to get the shape of the feather again with the V at the bottom, coming straight up and a long tapering down and then coming to a point at the top. Then when I go over it with my pen, I can add all sorts of feathery light details in there that I know exactly where my pen needs to go. On the sheet of paper that I've provided in the workbook, I want you to fill up your page with all of the elements you would like to add to your mushroom drawings. This gives your brain and easy reference for when you're sketching out your composition. Sometimes it's easier to just pick and choose, but we've already drawn what we already know, been trained to come up with something from scratch every time. Up next, let's take a closer look at perspective and cross contouring of the cats. 8. Cross Contour and Perspective: Let's take a look at perspective and cross contour. Here I have in front of me piece of paper that I've drawn some of these ovals and circles. Now they're identical on each side. And I'm going to show you how we can do two different perspectives with the same shapes. I've drawn the arc for the mushroom on both sides here. But the key is where I draw the stem. If I start the stand from the bottom part of the oval, it looks like the cap is pointing more towards me. Whereas on the left-hand side, if I start the stem on the upper part of the oval, it looks like we can see underneath the gills and this is an important distinction. And I have a whole page that you can practice this. I'm gonna make the same marks on each side for the top of the mushroom. But again on the left side we are rotating it up so we're looking underneath at the gills. And on the right side we are rotating it down. So we're looking more at the top of the cap. So these stems on both sides are starting from the same point, but when it's underneath and one is on top. Accreted this handy cutoff for you to help you see the perspective of where the lines need to go. So I have this one cut out right here. And I'm going to show you how you can do this. You can make the gills pointing down or you can make the gills pointing up. I'm going to fold it over like this. And I'm going to take the back this way. Whenever I rotate it. I can see how the gills are radiating out underneath the mushroom. This can help me reorient my perspective of where those skills needed to go. For those uplifted mushrooms. You can flip it inside out. You can see the same thing. So if we get this taped right here and I fold it over, you can see how the gills would be going radiating out. And right here is where the stem would be. As I rotate it, the lines change in. This can help me get the correct perspective on the mushroom I'm trying to draw. So don't forget to print that out and cut it out and use it as your reference. Okay, so back here, we've got our gills thinking about the cutoff that we just looked at. We can start our girls depending on how deep our mushroom cap is, we can start him from one of these center points. Now this is a deep mushroom. So we're gonna be starting this from up here. You can curve your lines or you can have them be straight. Okay, now down below it's rotated it up a little bit more. We're gonna be seeing more of these gills. So the starting point is right here in the middle of the stem. You're going to want to radiate your Gil lines out from this invisible point. In creating some guidelines for myself to keep myself on track as I go around and create these gills. And down here, again, it's the same thing. If we were drawing the semicircle and the inside of the stem, there's the middle of the stem right there. We're going to radiate, are gills out from that point. Again, I'm drawing these guidelines to keep myself on track. Now this is just flat, looking straight up at us, like the stem is cut here. So these are all going to radiate out from the center again. If we're looking at the cap and we're having it pointed down, Let's imagine that there's some marks right here at the top. As it rotates down towards us, those marks are going to move. Let's imagine the stem is ending right here in the middle. I'm sketching it in here so I can reorient myself where the center of this cafes and this is where those marks would go. Don't forget to practice in your worksheet. You can copy these lines. I also have a blank sheet that you can work on. Now we're moving on to cross contouring, little bit of a crash course here I have a template that you can take a look at. Let me quickly show you how to practice cross contouring so you can define the shape of your mushroom. If you can imagine these lines when you're painting or drawing, if you've practiced them enough, then you know that's where you can paint along these lines and draw along these lines to give your shape more volume. When you print this page off from your worksheet, go ahead and draw right on it to practice. My lines are following the shape of the cap as it goes down, as well as the stem. It's important to note that when you get to the edge of a shape on the elevation or the edge starts to change dramatically that your lines are going to get closer together. If I wanted to show the edge of this mushroom changing more dramatically than it is, I would have my lines a lot closer together, kind of like this. Okay, moving on to this section. This is very similar to a sphere, like a half a sphere, a draw my line down the middle and then I draw my curving lines radiating away from that. If I want to show elevation change, I'm going to put my contour lines closer together. Now across the top of the cap. Again, I'm showing the shape of that cap with these curved lines. So go ahead and practice on these contour drawing is definitely something to practice and learn. This is a crash course in some of these shapes that you'll find in mushrooms. But it only takes a little bit of practice to get a solid understanding of how to make these shapes. Up. Next, let's take a look at some easy ways to use simple shapes to create eye-catching composition. 9. Composition Practice : This section is all about composition. In your workbook, you'll find a page with empty templates. You can practice adding in your elements there. Let's walk through each of these shapes. Let's take a look at this oval. It's important to remember that with these shapes, these are just guiding where you're putting the major elements and you don't have to keep everything within the sheet. It's a good idea to point elements of your design pack towards each other so the viewer's eye follows the direction of the shape. I love adding small surprises like this frog. We have an inverted triangle, and we have a regular triangle. Mushroom compositions are frequently found in the shape. As I'm building out my composition, I'm trying to keep the main elements within my shape, but they can go over the edge, as you can see here. The diamond shape is more common than you think. Circles are also really common, as you can see here. Look at those cute snails. Each time I build up my composition, I placed my larger shapes in first and then I add my details in around it. Here's a teardrop shape which can point in either direction. Use these shapes as your guide to easily create your compositions. Up. Next, I'll walk you through how easy it is to put it all together. 10. Class Project Part 1 - Using the Chart: Now that we have gone through all the different parts of the mushroom, I'm going to show you how to put it all together in your sketch book. By now, you should have practiced all of the shapes of the mushroom. So let's move on to putting it all together and your sketchbook. I love mushrooms so much that I have a dedicated sketchbook to them. You don't have to have your own sketchbook. A piece of paper will do just fine for this project. I have my sketchbook set up with the disk bound system because I can swap out pages. As I need to. I really like working with this type of system. It can be organized without having to actually be organized to begin with. I also like this system because I can cut out sketches and tape them in some watercolors that I've done. And I got, had some stickers here. Like I'm pretty excited and stuck them off, you're out. These are really nice because my watercolor I can take out, I can take down, and then they can put back into my sketchbook so that I keep everything together. When practicing mushrooms, It's nice to have some source photographs. Will frequently check out books from the library that have really clear pictures. So I can look at how mushrooms are grouped and how the colorings are on different types of mushrooms. That's a really great inspiration. I also like using my own photographs of mushrooms. And I will frequently look on Pixabay, which is a good place for free source images. We have our chart here and I'm going to show you a fun way to randomly pick some of these shapes to create some unique and dynamic combinations that you might not have come up together. So starting here at the caps, we have 13 different combinations. Could use dice to choose a number. Let's get back here. We have 6123456 up with I'll make a mark there. We could do words. No or yes. Heads or tails. Tails. Yes. Right. See what this mushroom is going to look like? We're going to do. Her mushroom shape here. Works on the inside here. Ring skirt pointing up. Let's get that down here. Just going to sketch that in really quick. I made my mushroom big guilt directions up here. This is just a rough sketch, O and then we have a small stem. This used to be smaller and it's tapered. That's actually going to go like this. We have mycelium. We probably could have started this one's not. This is very rough, like this just looks like a scribble, which is how a good portion of my sketches start out. So let's start refining this. So if we have our uplifted and then we have rings skirt there. Let's bring this in a little bit more here. Edges. This is a completely random made-up mushroom. Just using this little recipe. We had enough first stem texture. Not a goofy looking guy. This is a fun way of just loosening up, creating new combinations that you just never would have thought of before. Some of them will work, and some of them will not. So let's do it again. Got my crazy dice here. We have three. So let's try. This guy will put them up here in this corner here. We have a sphere. Remember to leave room for guests. Spring skirt, Yes. Stem size, medium or stems? You need to leave room for real skirt, little rain skirt. We really can't see the pores of this, so we're going to leave that out. Stem texture and taper down. It looks like you should have a little faith. Floating ghost E here. Alright, so that's one way. I'm using the chart. 11. Class Project Part 2 - Creating the Composition: Another way is to take a look at the chart and just to remember each section of the mushroom that you can or can't add, all of the different combinations. And it might inspire you to create something new. So now we're going to use it like a choose your own adventure mushroom. I'm going to pick the conical shape here. And no words, no ring, skirt. And I'm not going to be able to see the gills, so we're going to skip all the way down to the stem. I'm going to do medium stem. I'm gonna do slightly bulbous at the bottom. But I think I'm going to make him with scales. So now I'm just kind of picking what I wanna do here. It's a wonky line. So I got one little mushroom here. So let's give him a little friend. Ovoid mushrooms. Skinny stems here. Do these little marks here. We've got maybe one more guys back there. Let's put another mushroom on this other side. Let's see what let's do. One of these guys, just kinda big, he's gonna stick out from behind here. Alright, so now we have a couple of mushrooms. Just by looking at the chart, reminded me of all the different combinations that we could use to make these mushrooms. Now that we've practiced doing the mushrooms using the chart, let's work on making our composition. So here we have our doodles. A little extra details that we can add. Here is we have our shapes. So let's think about what shape do we want to do today? Let's do a circle. Like circles. So I'm going to roughly draw my circle in. Just to remember that this is where my mushroom shapes are gonna be. I'm going to think about what details I might want to add. I like adding bugs. They're fun. Little tiny mushrooms, plants. So now that I've looked over all my elements, I can start choosing what I want to have in here. When making a composition. Odd numbers are your best bet. So you're going to want to have 357 groups of mushrooms, human eyes like looking at odd numbers. I don't know why. It just is, Let's do three spheres. And I'm going to do kind of like this, getting them kinda a little crazy, but that's okay. We can adjust that. I got three of these and maybe let's do two hats. Remember, these are just sketches. My sketches, my initial sketches are very scribbly. I reiterate them multiple times before I get them to a final composition. Alright, we got our mushrooms here. These are cylindrical, these are cylindrical. Let's think about how we want to add in. I think I'm going to add some more. I want one right here. One right here. I think I want another one right here. Have a little tool, little family here. So I'm thinking about what we can add it over here. Kinda continue this shape, continue this shape. This is a pretty big, this is our eye is gonna go here. So maybe we should have something pointing this direction. And maybe we can have something just kind of here. Okay. Like in that. So right now my eye is kinda going down like this over and around. Feel like we need to have some point of focus over here. We can put little tiny butterfly here. We're kind of looking over there and things kinda pointing at that. I can get some mass. Maybe this is the base of my mask down here. And I think I'm going to make some of these flowers. We've got this here. I think I'm going to make these different leaves than these. Almost like a firm, but not really just to fill up that space. And here. And these guys, Let's make these round. Know. You've already got round shapes here. Let's do. I almost feel like we need one more mushroom here. So we're going to just get that guy in my eyes having a hard time with those just those two. I think we're good here. There. That looks better. If I am just sketching for fun in my sketchbook. I wouldn't leave it at this point and come back to it later. However, if I decided I didn't like it and I want it to continue it further. Now it'd be the time that I would go start going over it. And during this stage, I would refine it. But I would also be remembering that this is still just my sketchbook. This is not a completed piece of artwork. I can take this further and use it as a base for a watercolor. Similar to what I did for here. This one was drawn, I don't know, four or five times before I. This is the final version, but it's still in my sketchbook. This is still an idea that I'm thinking. If I wanted to paint it later, I would again transfer it and painted again. This one. Same idea. Did it in pencil, went over with Penn, went in with colored pencils to work on some color ideas, especially down in here, I really like this gray and pink next to each other. And so if I ever transferred this into a painting, I would remember. I really like this section and that's what your sketch books are about, is going, Wow, I really like it when they're clumped up like this, that was really cool what I did or that maybe that didn't work as well. Don't put that in the composition. So this is how I use my sketchbook. Sometimes I just use it for practice. Sometimes I use it to remember how composition looks. Lots of different ways to use your sketchbook. This is, this is how I use mine. This I was just sketching from these cute little mushrooms that were just out on this log trying to get the general idea of them poking off there. So back to this one. Again. If you liked your composition. Come back in with pen and refined some of these shapes that are happening. I have these, these in pen. I don't have these in pen yet. But I do want to show you this is my favorite eraser. It doesn't tear up your paper. It's a kneadable eraser. You can get them at any art store. There's three ways I like using them. You can press down and just gently lift up the graphite. You can drag it and pull the graphite up. Or what I like using on watercolor paper so that I don't rub the paper at all is I actually just roll it over the top and it will gently lift up that graphite. This paper. I'm not worried about it rolling. So here I am taking up that I can still see my little more sketches there, that layer. And then we can continue refining this. Okay, so now we have a completed sketch and our sketchbook. And when I go to do a painting, I can refer back to this. And I can look at all the elements that I like and maybe continue to refine it as I go once I get to the painting or sketching stage, now it's your turn to use everything you've learned to create a completed composition. I can't wait to see it. 12. Conclusion: Thank you for joining me on this mushroom journey. I hope you have a better understanding of all of the different shapes of mushrooms and the different combinations that you can create. Keep using these techniques to easily elevate your mushroom doodle sketches and artwork. Please leave a review so you can help other mushroom lovers find this class. If you post your artwork on social media, I'd love to see it. Please tag me at Jennifer rice studio across all platforms. Don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare. So you will be the first to know when I have a new class out. Thank you and happy sketching.