Realistic Toadstool Painting

In my opinion, everything in nature is beautiful if you look at it closely enough. But some subjects instantly capture our imagination from afar. Like toadstools, for example. Their glowing red colour and surreal white spots are so eye-catching. In theory, they seem like they’d be lots of fun to paint. But have you ever actually tried to paint one? It can be hard to achieve their ethereal glow, especially if you’re using white paint for the spots. Thankfully creating a realistic toadstool painting in watercolour without the use of white paint is easier than you might expect.

If you’re lucky enough to spot one of these toadstools in the woods, it’ll draw you in like a magnet to take a closer look at this pristine, bright, temporary little structure that’s popped up from the earth.

Witnessing them in real like can feel like you’re experiencing magic first hand: partly from the stories of childhood that associate toadstools with fairies and enchanted woods. And partly because – how can something so perfect just spring up as if from nothing?

Realistic toadstool painting: the key to getting bright white spots

If you want to paint one of these beauties and for it to look so real that you can feel the magic coming from it, there’s a technique I recommend – and it doesn’t involve white paint.

I call it ‘negative painting’ where instead of painting the white spots on top of the red cap, as you would if you were using white paint, we paint around the spots, using the colour of the paper to give them their bright glow.

As you’ll see in this mini class, we get to work in a detailed way quite early in this process, adding shadows and details to the white spots before painting any red. I explain why in the video.

Watch the realistic toadstool painting mini class:

If you’re feeling inspired to fill your pages with some more woodland subjects, check out these other mini classes where I show you how to draw a 3D mushroom in pencil, a shiny conker (or buck eye) using pencil, a watercolor oak leaf and also this fluffy red squirrel.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you have a go at this realistic toadstool painting, or if you just enjoyed watching the video.

With love,