Lara Call Gastinger is an artist and botanical illustrator from Charlottesville, Virginia, and was the chief illustrator of Flora of Virginia, a botanical reference. She has an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in plant ecology from Virginia Tech. She has been awarded two gold medals (2007, 2018) at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art Show in London and her work is in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University. Her art appears in Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America and the American Society of Botanical Artists’s Botanical Art Techniques. She teaches online and in person and has traveled to Japan, Romania, and France to lead workshops. She is a lecturer in the University of Virginia Department of Landscape Architecture where she teaches a class about plant identification and drawing. Gastinger is renowned on Instagram (@laragastinger) for teaching her perpetual journal process. She can also be found at laracallgastinger.com and on Patreon.