STORY BEHIND THE ART OF INSIL CHOI

17th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists at The Horticultural Society of New York

Earthstars

Astraeus sp.

In the summer of 2013, I was working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA as an intern scientific illustrator. My supervisor was specialized in the study of fungi and mushrooms and we went mushroom hunting to beautiful woodlands around Cape Cod once a month. Earthstar is a small and very unique mushroom which I had seen only from photos. In August 2013, we went on another hunting trip/expedition right after a rainy day. I really hoped we could find some earthstars so I could have some fresh specimens to make my illustrations. But we could not find any and I was frustrated. However, my supervisor had one dried earthstar and he brought it to the lab for me. It was completely closed up. I poured a little water in a small plate with the earthstar and put a wet paper towel around it. It took it about two hours to absorb enough moisture to completely open its arms to stand up. Looking at the process was fantastic because it looked like a dead life became alive again! We videotaped the whole process so I got some perfect photo references for my illustration. I was very happy that I got a chance to look at the real earthstar specimen and its amazing performance.

My illustration is focused on two different aspects of earthstars, its shape and unique character.

Earthstar has an interesting body shape that looks like a starfish with a puffball in the middle top of the body. There are spores inside the puffballs. They also have an interesting survival strategy. In dry days, they close up their arms to cover and protect their puffballs, and in rainy days, they open their arms to stand up so they can have a better chance to get some raindrops to spread their spores.

I illustrated this unique behavior in a sequence from closed to open on the left side of the illustration. It was challenging to make the three earthstars on the left side look like the same specimen in the transformation process. I put a little folded part in the puffballs to keep the consistency and I made them overlap on each other to look uniform. Then, I drew four different earthstar species on the other side to give the viewer the general shape of earthstars. 

I choose black and white illustration using pen and ink stippling technique for this work because I wanted to focus on its unique aspects and make it highly detailed in shape. I eliminated its brown and grey color that is relatively common to other fungi, but focused on its unique star shape and the interesting process of opening arms so people can learn its main characteristics. 

This piece gave me an important lesson - that communication is the key in illustrations. My work is focused on communicating complex knowledge and information between professionals and the general public. I try to understand my audience first and use the most effective visual language to communicate with them. Making this piece was a very helpful experience for my body of work because I was trying to bridge scientists and the public at the same time. I appreciate beautiful and realistic work, but I love illustrations that can communicate and teach something with a gentle attitude.

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