Mushroom Forager & Forest Floor

My neighborhood went through a few storms and tornado warnings. Soon after, I took my kids on a walk and there were mushrooms on the lawns and trees. People add fairy doors along our trail, and my mind just took off from there. What if I lived on a tree, like a fairy, but in a mushroom house?

I have aphantasia, so I can't visualize any of this. A sketch usually starts with a palette for me. Ochre, umber, mossy green, bone. I build a Pinterest board, and when it's time, I sit at my desk, turn on some music, and draw.

My sketches usually start one way and end up totally different from the finished piece. I get in a flow state, sketch for about an hour, and come back later to refine. That didn't happen here. I stayed in the flow and finished it in one day: a mushroom cottage, a little forager with her basket, toadstools, bushes with tiny purple flowers.

I know this imagery is far from novel. Cottagecore and fairycore can feel really saturated, so I like making it my own. I'm a big fan of making one medium look like another, and it felt natural to turn digital art into a paper cut style. Everything here looks like it was snipped from felt and old parchment and layered by hand.