Florilegium (Panel 2) Drawing

I often find myself thinking about how every day millions of people carry on and don't think to look at the incredible details around them. We are used to seeing things at surface level, for what they are up front - seeing and understanding things on a macro level. Rarely do we truly investigate what we have surrounding us every day on a micro level. I went to Ireland with the hopes of studying around new people and being in a new, different country. Little did I know that I would end up finding an entirely new world within ours.The terrain in Ireland is beautiful, but I didn't think too much of it at first - being from Colorado I was always around nature and it was something I was used to, but not inspired by. Where I was in Ireland there wasn't much else to do but eat and be out in the land exploring, so that is exactly what I did. I will never forget what I stumbled upon one day after finishing up have tea and pastries with friends. We wandered over a fence and into a deeply wooded grove. Every square inch was covered in what seemed like thousands of different shades of green all melded together from below my feet to above my head. It was astonishing, I've never been in such a large space and been visually bombarded with such intense detail from all different species of plants. Every color, fold of a leaf, blade of grass, flower, everything became a conglomerate. It was difficult to even seen depth of space because it was all one. That is why I started drawing my "Florilegium" panels. I wanted to recreate the feeling of not knowing where something begins and ends while still paying attention to every detail. I intended to draw these not how our eyes and brain understand the hierarchy of space, picking out the shapes and colors that come into focus first, but I wanted to draw every single micro detail that I possibly could. I wanted to draw these on 100% cotton rag paper, with charcoal, and have them mounted on custom red oak frames that were made and sealed with all natural materials because I wanted to create something representative of the earth I was inspired by. Each of "Florilegium" panels took roughly 1,000 hours to draw, totally over 2,000 hours of work collectively between the two panels - a lot of love went into these and I hope for someone to be able to look at them and feel the sense of importance for even the littlest detail, because in my opinion it is the small things we notice or remember that hold a certain place in our minds.