Drawing diary: November

These drawing diaries have slowly transformed into nature nerding sessions and I'm totally okay with that. Usually, I keep my blog posts strictly on the topic of gaming, but I've found it's really nice to have a place to talk about my daily, analogue life every now and then (and post photos of pretty things). My Drawing Diaries are best suited for that. I've added the label Nature to the appropriate posts, so you know beforehand you'll not only have to suffer through those drawings, but through my nature fangirling as well.

I've considered removing the "drawing" part of the title, but for now they are a great reminder for me that I actually need to draw stuff.

Drawing wise, I made some illustrations for my blog post Pokémon Go's Halloween event:

The first illustration I made was this one of Gengar celebrating my departure to Sweden (where there were no pokémon to catch). It's not exactly of high artistic value, but the Gengar makes me grin with its mix of looking derpy and evil at the same time, and it did its job as blog post illustration well.

The drawing below came into being from wanting a second illustration for that blog post, but having no creative ideas about what to draw. Funnily enough I like the result a lot more, also as a standalone picture.

That's all I drew in November, though. The rest of the month was pretty uneventful. My health continued to be poor and I barely have managed to do anything for my studies. I've been in so much pain that I had to take morphine for the first time in my life. All this sitting home and feeling terrible has brought the usual gloomy thoughts along. I've kept myself positive by writing blog posts so far, but I really have to restructure my day and go kick some ass to keep away that lurking depression.

Although it's really nice to be able to vent in my drawing diary posts, I don't want them to become whiny. So this is where we go on to the next section: nerding out about nature with Rav.

Cladonia spec. (heidelucifer, "heather matches")

I used to love hiking in the mountains, and cycling around with friends to look for rare plants and animals. Ever since I became ill I haven't been able to do it much, so going for a walk on a nearby heath with Conrad and my mother filled me with happiness (okay, this sounds really cheesy, but it just does). I was hoping for some mushrooms because it had rained a lot the days before, but honestly didn't expect much so late in the year. I was wrong, though, and soon came to regret not taking my mushroom book with me!

I knew this heath as a production pine forest back in the day, before it burned down. It was really cool to see that it has since developed not just as a heath, but also as an interesting nature area. For those from the Netherlands, it's the heath near Den Treek, east of the N227.

The first subject worthy of nature loving adoration were the lichen (picture above). I don't have a lichen book, so I don't get much further than the genus for the lichen above (there are multiple species that look alike), but I always love their happy red dots. They do look a bit like matches (which is the Dutch name for them - I'm too lazy to look up the English name for all the species I encountered, so you'll have to do with my crappy translations from Dutch!).

From left to right: Phaeolous schweinitzii (dennevoetzwam), Scleroderma citrinum (gele aardappelbovist, "yellow potato fungus") and Clavaria argillacea (heideknotszwam).

Then we actually saw some mushrooms, too. My mother was super impressed by the oak sprout growing from the brown mushroom to the left (it's hard to see on the picture, but it is there). An acorn must have fallen on top of it and started growing, so the mushroom itself must've been around for a while. I took a picture of it for her, but I had no idea of the species and didn't have much hope of finding out which one it was, as it looked pretty old and rotten. When I got home and had access to my mushroom book, though, it turned out it likely was the most uncommon species we had seen today.

It probably was Phaeolous schweinitzii (dennevoetzwam, "pine foot fungus"). When it is young, it looks very different: it is soft en dark yellow at first; then it turns rusty brown (as on the picture) and eventually black. It lives on the roots of pine trees, firs in particular. It is probably growing on the root of that chopped off pine you see on the picture. Nerd alert: it makes me fangirl that it's actually at the foot of a pine, as it says in its name. Too perfect!

The really sad specimen in the middle is not something I would usually take a picture of, but I earned some nerd points by being able to tell my mum (who was intrigued by it) that it was the common earthball. I do think the Dutch name, "yellow potato fungus", is much more fun! (For the record, they're supposed to look like a yellow ball, but this one is so old it's decaying and starting to tear apart.)

The yellow tentacles (right fungus of the above picture) coming from the ground made me fangirl, because when I first saw this species, about 15 years ago, I was told it was rare. However, I soon became the laughing stock of the company, because...

...they were everywhere! Conrad and mum dispersed over the heath, pointing down every now and then: "Rav, here's more of your rare mushroom!" They really cracked me up. I just love these alien like little yellow tentacles. In Dutch they are called "heideknotszwam", which is "heather club fungus". You can probably guess why: it's because of their typical club form. There are other "club fungi" species in different colours that are much rarer. I still would love to find the black version one day.

When we were about to return home, we saw a group of people standing around something in the forest. Of course we were curious what they were looking at, so we checked it out. Turns out it was this (they had no idea what it was):

This huge thing is the grote sponszwam ("big sponge mushroom"). It's larger than a football. Isn't it just glorious? It is edible, but it felt a shame to destroy such a cool thing. Also, I wasn't encouraged much by my mushroom loving (as in, culinary) friend who says it's impossible to get all the insects out because of its sponge structure. Still regret I didn't take a small piece with me, though, just to taste.

Did you see any cool mushrooms this autumn? If you blogged about it, feel free to drop a link in the comments and I'll definitely check it out.