Not only can an all-digital work environment allow for creative choices otherwise unattainable in the image creation process, but today's digital print methods offer more even after the 'digital master' is created. Technological advances in the digital printing process now readily make possible printing on nontraditional media such as canvas and fine art watercolor papers. For the fungi and wild mushoom art giclees which I create, I prefer the look and texture of heavy weight watercolor fine art 'board' papers. Virtually all of the wild mushroom art prints you see represented here and at the on-line gallery store are made on Hahnemuhle's highest quality heavy weight fine art watercolor papers. While these art giclees may little resemble traditional mushroom pictures which are presented as photographs, they are not watercolors either. They lie somewhere in between. The watercolor paper texture is often very evident, but it is not always so. It depends greatly upon the individual wild mushrooms picture from which the digital master mushroom picture is derived. I choose watercolor papers individually for each unique mushroom picture by making test prints with the papers whose textures and base color intuitively seem the most complementary to the wild mushroom pictures in question. It is possible with experience often to anticipate a paper for a given mushroom picture, but there are always pleasant surprises to be had as well. Please see the gallery web site at http://gallerycalifornia.com for more details about the print method, paper choices, and to view close-up images showing the detailed paper textures of these watercolor board papers.
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 10
Especially for the wild mushroom fine art giclee prints taken of fungi living on the forest floor such as that of the great California coastal redwood forests. The mushroom photographs taken there almost always show aspects of the life cycle of the redwood forest as well as their own. In those pictures there seems to always creep in some of the characteristic organic litter of the redwood forest or the mushrooms themselves in the pictures are growing from a log or fallen redwood branch. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 15
If you chose to do so, you certainly could set out to make a fungi art gallery out of the actual fungus mycelia which produce the mushroom fruit bodies, but then you would miss out on all the great mushrooms the mycelia produce. Taking pictures to create that kind of a fungi gallery would be more like taking pictures to create a rose gallery of rose stems, roots, and petals, instead of a gallery of rose blossoms. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 11
The forest provides absolutely everything required by the fungi mycelium. The decaying organic debris of the forest gives the mycelium all the nutrients it will need throughout its life. The organic litter gives it the nourishment it needs to fruit and to yield the beautiful mushrooms you see in the mushroom giclee prints like The Sage and in the …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 08
A mushroom picture really only reveals a little bit about the life of the fungus mycelium which produces the mushroom fruit body you see in the picture. A snapshot of the life of the fungus is really a good term. Because the mushroom itself is merely the fruiting body of the mycelium, taking a mushroom picture shows a snapshot in time - of the time when the mycelium is fruiting, which may sometimes be very brief in a given season. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 17
The mycelium which is fruiting and producing the mushrooms at the time of a mushroom picture may be anything from a relatively new fungus growth to a much older, established fungus. A well established fungus mycelium may stretch over great areas underground or throughout the mass of a rotting stump or log. It is particularly dramatic to imagine the hidden mycelium of a fungus in a huge redwood stump or log where one sees them within the vestiges of the old growth redwood forests and within the remains of the forests left after decades of ruthless logging. …