Fun thing I've been doing this bank holiday weekend; starting work on the next Journal of Video Game Botany I'm making with my partner in botanical SciArt-crime, Dr. Maria Christodoulou. We've finally made up our minds to head to ancient Greece. I've been putting off doing an Assassin's Creed Odyssey zine because Maria 1) is Greek, and 2) has a botanical PhD. So... I have some anxiety that my part of this better be good, or she might not forgive me and her mum might never send me food again. Yikes! I think we finally have a plan, though.

AC Odyssey is one of my all-time favourite games, and I will never not love Kassandra. But working out how to botanise the world of this game was trickier than expected. Partly because we want to make each issue of JVGB different to the last, instead of just making it into a series of field guides. And partly because of our expectations of what we'd see, based on Greece IRL and what we know about its history....

The Journal of Video Game Botany #2 - The flora of Horizon Zero Dawn: medicinal valley's blush

Finally got JVGB issue 2 in the store! This one is about how botanist Maria & I went about creating a scientific description for a fictional plant. We talk about what physical properties we think it would have, how we wrote and visualised the plant from a Nora healer's perspective, what art materials a Nora might make, and... How I accidentally came up with a fictional moth species that lives on medicinal valley's blush... Look, I love moths and I'm very predictable! & In my defense we also thought of a way the Nora would use the caterpillar. We plan to botanise more of HZD and HFW in future.

Issue 1 was about the fungi of AC Valhalla, and took the form of a field guide.

Issue 3 will be about the flora of Baldur's Gate 3 - the real and fictional plants, fungi, & lichen that exist side by side in the game. It will probably take the form of discussions (or maybe sh!tposts) between our player characters (a bard and a druid) about the wildlife. Watch this space...

Lungwort lichen and wood sorrel growing as epiphytes on a mossy tree trunk. Ancient Atlantic woodlands are so precious.

Dusty's field notes and sketchbook

Flora of Kreet: Dust root

Are these huge looping stems individual plants, or is each part of an even larger underground whole? Is the structure we see above ground only there to spread seeds from its pod, or is it perennial? So many questions, no time to dig for answers.

Video game botany: the flora of Starfield

Finished my Leicestershire/Ledercestrescire fern page for Eivor's herbarium after the WIP I posted last wkend! Will tidy up the scan and write the things later. Just glad to have finished somthing tbh... Life is a bit fkd up rn. So I am taking comfort in video game botany as always :)

It was kinda hard to pick words (I ain't no poet) and to keep the lettering consistent on this page. The pressed fern was large and didn't fit in one piece either. But it still made me happy to do.

Other plants I want to include for this county are flowers from Skari's island at Repton, and wood avens from the ruins at Venonis

It's Friday again. Please enjoy this fungus <3

It's Friday. Please enjoy these fungi. (Also pls let me know which one you prefer bc I can't decide which sketch is better? 🤷)

How is it that I drew all these botanical structures

Yet today am struggling to illustrate some basic, small, needle-like leaves?

Arrrrrrrggghhhhh.

Why is being human/Mondays/my brain like this??? 🙃😭

Tomorrow I'm running a delightful drawing workshop on lichen and queerness, so pls enjoy this 💖

(Tonight my hosts arranged a room for me and it has bee-related decor and decorative fir cones and it's so gahdammed delightful I'm telling you ✨🐝🌲✨)

I've been a bit quieter on here lately because work is busy, and my health is... a little wild. I'm really looking forward to getting back to some frivolous video game botany over the holidays tho, fingers crossed 🌿💚

Lichen doodles from my sketchbook ✏️💚

Just needed to look at some nice lichen. Thought I'd share 🌿💚

Lichen sketch - forked tube lichen AKA Hypogymnia imshaugii, from a photo by Jason Hollinger

It's Monday.

May we take care of ourselves and each other this week.

May we survive another week of our government of self-serving bigoted shit-spackled arsebarnacles.

& May we add alt text to images.

Pls enjoy this motivational lichen-covered pebble. 🪨🌿💖

Toadflax brocade thinking about warming up for take-off, then deciding to rest for a bit longer!

May we all find some time to rest this week 🦋💖

As the name suggests, the toadflax brocade feeds on the wildflower toadflax, which is a great bee plant as well as a food source for many moths and butterflies. Also known as butter-and-eggs and wild snapdragon (although not in the same taxonomic group as cultivated Antirrhinum snapdragons,) toadflax is easy to grow. & If it finds its way into your garden you could let it stay and help feed your local moths!

Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋✨

Video game botany: Eivor's herbarium

In the autumn I collected some fern fronds and pressed them to use on the first herbarium page for leicestershire/ledercesterscire. In game the county is perpetually autumnal, so I wanted to try and capture the colours. I haven't seen any of the ferns here turning as red as they do in ACV until they're too far gone and crispy to press, so the yellow/orange colours are as good as I can get.

These fronds are mostly too big for my scanner, which means they're going to need trimming to fit on the book pages! Which frond do you think will look best?

Smol self-promotion thing! Here's where else you can find my moth art, zines, and homemade paint-making mayhem:

- I have a mailing list where you can get a free zine and a shop discount once a month here

- Support me on Patreon here

- My store for handmade paints, playing cards, and zines is here

Thanks for looking, & wishing you all the good things for the weekend 🦋🖌️💖

Sometimes good drawings emerge from the shitshower of my sketchbooks. Sometimes it's just shit.

The older I get, the more likely it is that I'm able to pull flowers out of all that crap, but don't think the carnage isn't there.

The mess & internal screaming is always just a page flip away.

(Felt like I was precariously walking a line between the shit and the shiny art today. Eeeep.)

The drawings are for a miniature of Fritillaria affinis aka checker-lily in polychromos pencil over watercolour, btw. Tiny drawing, big sketchbook mess 🙃