Herbalism, Toxicology, and a dresser?

Mar 19

Written By Maeghi

Backstory

I had an oollllddddd dresser that I painted while in college. It was in rough shape from moving a few times and from not being sealed, so I wanted to touch it up…

In the process, I messed up the art, so I thought I could just repaint everything, but that messed it up worse, so after a few coats of paint and everything looking hilariously bad, I sanded everything to bare wood and put it aside to deal with it “later.”

Over the next several days, I was binging Chubbyemu’s toxicology reports on YouTube, which led to a Saturday rabbithole about ancient poisonings, and then I had the idea to paint a bunch of toxic plants on the dresser. I started sketching lineart in procreate, fully intending to transfer the art and paint it like a “real” artist. /s

Welp, I have autoimmune issues that affect my joints, and halfway into transferring the lineart to the drawers, my joints said helllll no.
Defeated, I just colored in the lineart and it ended up looking really cool. I wondered if I could just poster-print it and decoupage, couldn’t find anything online, so I had it printed on canvas, which looked **incredible**.
I literally cut up the canvas and used wood-glue to attach it to the drawer fronts, added feet and new pulls, and voila, my favorite piece of furniture.
I excitedly shared this in a few facebook groups, where everyone was just as excited as me. Prints were demanded, and here we are.

Plants and notes:

I have this problem where I assume everyone knows what I’m talking about when I reference things, but that’s usually never the case and I sound a bit deranged.

Here are all of the plants in the art, in alphabetical order by common name. The botanical illustrations are all public domain; feel free to download from here or find attributions and different resolutions in my getArchive collection. I’ve included the scientific name, some facts, and my thoughts for each one, just click to expand and read.