Welcome to Lizzie Harper’s Website!

These are three of the enormous variety of fungi that are currenlty fruiting in and around Hay-on-Wye (where I live).

I was lucky enough to get to paint all three from life, while selling prints and cards in Hay castle, and chatting to visitors to the @Fungitown festival last weekend

They are the Brown rollrim Paxillus involutus, poisonous with decurrent yellow gills stretching down the stipe, and a distinctive brown in-rolled wavy edge.

Then there`s the wonderful and locally rare Echinoderma hystrix This beautiful little white fungus does not have an English name. It is covered all over in brownish black scales, including on the stipe. There are small dark red blobs where the white gills touch the cap edge, these are fluid produced in a process called guttation

The final species I illustrated over the festival is the #scaberstalk boletes leccinum cyanobasaileucum. It has a very domed dark brown cap, a textured stipe (with soil at the base) and pale spongy hymeium. I included slug damage on the cap where the pale flesh shows through the brown colouration.

#naturalhistoryillustration #sciart #fungi ...

All three of these gorgeous fungi have been found in fungal forays @fungitownhay this weekend, along with about 100 or more other species.

The first is Sulphur Tuft Hypholoma fasciculare, common on tree stumps. The second is the British Earthstar Geastrum britannicum, which is really rather rare, and found in a local churchyard, and the third is Plums and Custard Fungus tricholomopsis rutilans, also found in the same churchyard.

Checking out the table of finds in @hay_castle is a real eye opener - so much variety and so many beautiful fungi, mostly growing on our doorstep.

Come and join us, ill be painting in the gallery upstairs all day.

#Fungitown #hayonwye #botanicalillustration @fungitownhay ...

I`m getting excited about Fungitown next weekend (October 3rd and 4th), and am getting limited edition prints and greetings cards, as well as original illustrations prepared.

I`ll be in Hay Castle, illustrating some of the fungus that`ll be foraged and identified over the festival, & selling cards & botanical illustration prints & originals.

There`s so much going on over the weekend, come and visit!:

www.fungitown.org.uk/programme-1

(Illustrations show the Edible mushroom Agaricus bisporus, Scarlet Elfcup being painted, Sulphur tuft in pencil and watercolour, a monchrome study of enoki mushrooms, and a rather cool logo to promote the whole event.)

#fungitown #visithay #botanicalillustration ...

Just published a new real-time film of me doing a botanicalillustration of a nasturtium flower:

https://youtu.be/XGeSNvRmhBM

They`re great subjects to illustrate, such glowering colours, such interesting structures, edible, and flowering late into autumn (in the UK). Give it a go?

#nasturtium #sciart #noaiart #botanicalillustration #flowerart ...

This is the Peacock butterfly, Aglais io, which I painted at Ento26.

The progress photos show the steps involved, from laying down initial washes of colour, through adding detail and building depth into the colour on the wings, and building texture and colour on the fur of the body.

The last progress photo shows everything painted but the bottom eye spots, antennae, eyes, and the wing veins. I always leave the wing veins white until the end, then put colour over them. This means they are still visible and add structure to the expanse of the butterfly wings.

#naturalhistoryillustration #entomologicalillustration #aglaisio #peacockbutterfly ...