summer portrait

Since tomorrow marks the end of summer vacation for school age kids in Durham, I thought I'd post one of my summer projects.  This portrait is 2x2' and I really wanted to concentrate on the values of color (meaning dark, med, light).  I worked from a photograph, and made a 12x12" fabric piece first, then liked it so much I enlarged the pattern, and worked with stained glass on wood panel.  It is one of those mosaics that really looks fantastic from 15 ft away, but I do like to study the tesserae (pieces) and andamento (flow) up close to see what I could improve upon for the next work.  Anyone recognize the subject?  xo

Fungi

This has been a strange summer for weather.  We had almost no rain for a month, mid June-mid July.  Then 2 weeks of very wet and cool temps.  Yesterday, all of a sudden, there were mushooms.  Everywhere on our .5 acre lot.  Mold on mushrooms.  Yuck.  So this morning I got down and really looked.  There are at least 7 kinds of mushrooms that I could easily discern from each other, and I'm sure others that I couldn't distinguish.  This one looked  the most like a " regular" mushroom.

Several of them are lovely shades of red, orange, and pink.

Creatures have been eating some of them, and some are covered in fuzzy mold. Some are growing together like a family, others single.