Mouldy Mushrooms

Time enough for one quick post before I head off to Paris on Monday- apologies in advance for anyone who has a cleaning thing or doesn't like mould...
The above photo is quite a cool thing (for those that are into this kind of stuff)- if you just leave a large flat bottomed mushroom on a piece of paper overnight (may need longer depending on the temperature) then it creates an imprint of the frills. When you have the darkness or texture you need, spray it with fixative or hair spray to hold it in place. Neat huh?

I had left the mushrooms on the side to continue drawing them at a later date and they started growing moulds, giving the idea that if I left it longer, there would be a variety of textures to draw inspiration from. Mushroom frills are interesting on their own of course but fluffy, blue frills are even better!! Or am I mad?

We had a drawing workshop with the lovely Jane Askey, and were asked to draw small observational drawings and then put them together in a collage at the end.  I was drawing from little mushrooms and some of the above photos which I have stuck together on my wall for inspiration.

There's kind of a positive/negative thing going on here which I really like.

A job for Paris is to source fabrics for this project- which means I will be rummaging through the fabric markets and shops with purpose rather than just because I can't help myself!