Introducing: Thursday Themes

In the interest of getting a routine going with my blog and also hopefully motivating me to keep up with my art, I've decided to try something new.  A weekly feature.  I've seen Tag Tuesday, and What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday, and WiP Wednesday and Yarn Pr0n Friday, but I'm starting something new.  Years back I tried starting Handspun Monday but I didn't spin enough to really keep it going.  This time I'm challenging myself to Thursday Themes.  Every week, or every other week, or as often as I can (because let's be honest, it's ME), I'm going to post all the art and all the stuff I have (or a reasonable amount thereof) on a particular theme.  And you, my few but loyal Pocketeers, are welcome to join me in this modest attempt at a routine.  Maybe you'll want to start posting Thursday Themes.  Or maybe one of my themes might inspire you, and you can riff on it and post your work on your blog.  But feel free to simply observe if that's all you feel like doing. 

For my first Thursday Theme, I'm posting mushrooms.  I have been super into mushrooms as a motif as well as a food for a couple of years, and especially right now.  You might say I have a Hobbit-like love of mushrooms.  I've always liked them as food, but I think I developed this affinity for this motif because I'm into faeries and gnomes, and mushrooms tend to figure into depictions of those tiny  supernatural beings.  You've seen a couple of things I've done with these delicious little cuties in the previous two posts, and I'll touch on them here, but there is so much more. 

Last year, I carved this set of stamps for myself: 



I also cut a set of masks, most of which I have lost, in these shapes so I could do a positive/negative thing.  With the masks, acrylic paint, and some tissue paper, I started this (still unfinished) canvas panel:

Still want to add the stamps, and some dimensional stuff like moss and twigs, and I'm undecided about whether to use that tissue paper that I stamped "faery ring" on, chillin' up there in the corner of the photo. 

Around the same time, I found a frame I really liked at Target or Michael's or someplace, and it was cheap, so I decided to do something with it.  This is what I came up with, using Tim Holtz Distress Inks, die cut letters, Fragments, and Foliage.  And my stamps, plus an acorn one from Inkadinkado. 

Lately I've been playing with my mushroom stamps again.  You saw my Deutschroom spread in my Debris Journal from Create, and some of the stencils I used in my Frond Chronicles book:

 

 

And in my last post one of my featured items was a medieval mushroom ATC.  Well, it actually has a companion, and I've been thinking about doing a whole series:

 



And since then, I've scaled up.  I saw this great color combination at Crate & Barrel, and decided that it's what I've been trying to come up with for our dining room.  So I cut some REALLY BIG mushrooms out of a file folder, got out my paints and my Michelle Ward stencils, and attacked this canvas background I had sitting around:

 



And ended up with this:

 



I've also been playing around with trying to incorporate my old medium, sketching, into stamping and mixed media.  So here's a test sheet that I did, featuring, of course, mainly mushrooms.

 

 

There's a lot I still want to do featuring mushrooms, but meanwhile I pay attention to where I find them, in town near my job, in the manga I'm reading, in things I see in stores and everywhere.  Where have you seen mushrooms lately?  Do they ever make their way into your art or onto your dining room table?

 

Mushrooms near work.

Look at that huge multi-shroom back there!

Cute tiny shroom.

 

How adorable are these little guys?

Reason #523 I should not be allowed in Crate & Barrel with my debit card - tea towels.