Story: Princess Mushroom

This piece was made in preparation of the Psychedelic Club's Mindful Market. Mushrooms--and fungi as a whole--are some of the most underrated life on the planet. From delicious garish, to effective medicine, to deadly poison, and trippy experience makers, these not-plants are magical.

The princess dress design was inspired in part by Princess Peach form Mario Brothers. This spacey girl looking into the distance is surrounded by fireflies in the habitat that mushroom tend to grow in - the forest. What surprised me while drawing this was how quickly I got it done. It took only about 8 hours. Most of my pieces take 10 to 15. I accredit this to a little bit of tracing, but mostly to my newly simplified style of drawing the human body. I have been taking a leaf out the early 2000s Western Animation style of character design by using less curves and greatly simplified shapes to render my human figures. I decided to take implement this change in preparation for my pet project animated story book I plan to start after I get financially back on my feet. This new style makes drawing a lot more fun than my pseudo-anime style I was doing before. I'll definitely be using this style in the future.

Back to the subject matter at hand though: magic mushrooms. Psilocybin is one of nature's more underrated pain killers. A few people I know use or have used small doses of this medicine to treat the outrageous pain cause by conditions like endometriosis and cluster headaches. As someone who responds poorly to most pharmaceuticals, I understand why it has gained traction in the "spoonie" or chronic pain community. Yes, most users of psilocybin are just trying to get high and talk to machine elves and the like, but like with a lot of psychedelic's, when taken at a low dose, it had select medicinal applications.