The final artwork by Michelle Annette Leveille, ready to be delivered.

My client, a gourmet mushroom farmer, had had a very vivid dream about the mushroom. He had awakened and wrote it down. He sent me the text and asked me to paint it in the style of old botanical prints.

I read the text and found it very meaningful. It was about how his grandfather had shown him the big shroom and it had grown in his hands, then divulged a pearl. When he looked closely at the pearl, he saw the universe inside.

A real mushroom with beautiful fluted gills called a true chanterelle. Photo by Mark Williams.

I interpreted the dream as meaning that his elder had taught him the mushroom farming business that would sustain him. The way he described the mushroom and how it parted with the pearl was suggestive of a woman’s birth. I inferred that the pearl represented his legacy and sagacity.

Lactarius mushrooms exude a milky substance.

I pried into the farmer’s situation a little and found that he and his father had started his business only within the past few years, and that he had a wife with two girls. They had just found out they were due to have a third child. Here is what he said about the dream:

The way I interpret my dream is my grandfather represents wisdom, holy knowledge. The mushroom represents my wife that needs my support. I have a feeling of love and reverence for this mushroom bearing me this pearl. The pearl represents our baby (which at the time we had no idea of the sex), the pearl was blue which in retrospect seems prophetic since we now know we're having a boy. When my grandfather told me to look into the pearl and I saw the universe, to me that meant my family is my universe. My everything.  I hold it in my hand and I need to protect it.

Ravenel’s stinkhorn mushroom photo by WiseAcre Gardens

2. The dream mushroom represented the joining of man and woman to create pregnancy.

The mushroom cap is suggestive of a pregnant woman’s belly or breast.

I sketched the mushroom in Photoshop and sent the design to my client for his approval.

My first sketch of the mushroom was done in Photoshop, on a digital image of antique paper.

I also considered how I was going to make the canvas appear antiquated. The only vintage paper I had was in old rotting books. It wouldn’t hold up to paint very well, and it would be tiny. I wanted to make the print life-size, almost 20 inches tall. This paper was too small.

The last page of “Times of Gustaf Adolf” begs to be up-cycled.

Fortunately, I found a random piece of paper that I had stored next to a piece of masonite. The paper had gotten stained by the tannins in the textured board. The paper itself was a bit thin, but it now had a nice linen texture, like a fine canvas. I sent a photo of it to the farmer. He approved the mushroom design and the paper.

One of the paper samples the client and I considered using

I continued designing the layout of the print in Photoshop. I wanted to make sure I got it all correct before committing it to the flimsy piece of paper, which might tear if I erased it too much. I made cross-sections of the mushroom to scale, and a series of drawings illustrating how the mushroom undulated then prolapsed to part with the pearl. I inset the client’s text describing the dream and other details to explain the painting.

A later draft of the artwork showed ideas for supporting drawings.

I suggested that we label the parts of the mushroom. To make it look like a legitimate antique, I used Latin text. But I contrived words that were combinations of the real latin names for mushroom parts and real parts of human anatomy, and latin verbs for what was happening.

“Hymenium fluctus” means waving or contracting gills.

At this point in the project, we found out that the new member of the farmer’s family was a boy. To celebrate, we subtly incorporated my client’s firstborn son’s name into the text.

When mushrooms are very young, they are called morps.

Once he had approved all that, I was ready to transfer the artwork onto the paper.

Setting up the grid system to transfer the draft image onto the final paper

I used a grid system to sketch in the artwork with a pencil. To do this, I affixed the page onto a cutting board with a grid on it, and used two perpendicular rulers to map out the artwork without actually drawing a grid on the paper. That was the most difficult part of this project.

Writing on the flimsy paper with the pencil had been difficult, and I realized that using ink and paint to complete the artwork would be even more challenging. So I paid a sign making company to mount the paper onto a stiff, pH-neutral foam core board.

The edge of the finished piece showing the foam core board that supports it

Then it was time for the fun stuff - inking and painting!

Text inked with a brush

I chose India and sepia ink for the text and outlines. I am not confident in my ability to use a fountain pen, so I used a very thin brush. It was painstaking work and it took a few weeks. I misspelled some Latin words. But I listened to educational podcasts while I worked so I feel I am a better person because of this project.

Very tiny brushes

The paints I used are called water-based oils. They are pliant like oil paints, but they can be thinned with water to make a vibrant watercolor effect and they generally dry more quickly than oils. Best of all, they don’t require turpentine.

Water-based oil paints used on this project. I also used some lamp black.

I mostly used Winsor & Newton yellow ochre and titanium white on this project. The white takes longer than the other colors to dry, so I had to wait a few days between painting the various pigments so they wouldn’t blend if I didn’t want them to.

After all of the painting was completed, I went back over some of the outlines with ink where I had painted over them.

Medial section through the mushroom, showing the gills.

Then it was done! I really enjoyed working on this project and hope to again with more clients such as this. I found him incredibly easygoing and generous with his praise:

“You put so much into the project! I’m so grateful to have found you. Thank you! It’s going to look so great on our wall. We’ll cherish it for generations.”

I understand his gourmet mushrooms are pretty good too. You should read about his enterprise on his Simply Manna Gourmet Mushrooms website, and you’ll probably want to friend him on his Simply Manna facebook page. The next time you’re in the Sacramento area, try some of his rose oyster mushrooms for me!