One question I get a lot is where do I get the toads, frogs and turtles that appear in my drawings. (The snake is my pet carpet python.) The answer is, from the wild. I capture (or have been given by awesome friends) all of the toads, frogs and turtles in my drawings. Sometimes I only capture them with my camera. This is especially true with turtles. They are quick. I really would LOVE to have a frog or two at my disposal, because I feel like I need more frogs in my art. By far the easiest volunteers to find are American toads.

The toads are my favorite to draw. They have such pouty looks on their faces. They are short and stout much like myself. When it comes to catching them, it’s pretty easy. Turtles are fast and can disappear into nasty pond water in seconds. Frogs you have to chase, and more often than not – plop! – they’re gone into the deep.

Toads are pretty easy to find. I have a few spots I can go find one 50% of the time. Tonight I was at my parents’ house and I thought “I wonder if there’s a toad behind the garbage can?”

This guy was next to the garbage can, staring intently down at a bug he was going to eat. He was easy to grab, though he puffed up and tried to pee on me right away. Here’s a pro toad hunting tip – hold it by the sides until it pees, because it’s going to try to pee on you.

We had a quick preliminary photo session tonight where I tried my newly made light tent and tried to get as many angles as I could of this toad. He is very green and has very red “warts.” I didn’t have the props I wanted to do a complete photo for a major drawing, so I took a bunch of photographs of the guy in different positions. Tomorrow I will grab a couple props and do another photo session. Tonight he is in a 20 gallon aquarium with some tasty earthworms. Toads eat surprisingly well in captivity. Then Thursday he will go back into the “wild” of suburban Minneapolis.

I would like to thank my “volunteers.” I couldn’t do this without them. I try to treat them well and provide as many gross bugs as I can gather. I try to keep them for as short a time as possible – many time hours instead of overnight. I try to be respectful of where they live and release them exactly where they are found.

This summer I hope to catch a leopard frog or wood frog for an idea or two I have. There are many fairy tales about frogs; I just need to find a prince willing to star in one for me.

This is a special thanks to those critters – most of them now back in the wild – for posing for me. I am sure it was stressful, but you can tell all your friends now that you are a piece of art. I hope the accommodations were to your liking and I thank you for putting up with me.

I had this idea a couple years ago – to have a snake inside an apple-shaped jar in a still life. The connection between snake and apple has been made for hundreds of years now, never mind that the Bible makes no mention of apples specifically. It’s funny how our culture latches on to things – true or not – and they become a kind of truth.

I had this idea and procured the apple shaped jar from Etsy. It’s a nice jar. This jar sat on our piano for nearly two years. We put rocks in it. The snake I was going to put inside of it grew too large to fit. Finally, with a month left before the 21st Annual CPSA International Show stops accepting entries, I began planning the drawing once and for all.

Snake, apple, jar and flowers all posed and viola~ “Still Life With Apple Jar”.

Hopefully it makes it into this year’s CPSA show. If it does or does not, I am happy with the direction of my artwork lately. I can look around my house and see a complete body of work that all relates to one another. It’s great. My next piece is very similar to this one, and then when I am finished with that, it will be spring.

My spring plans are to catch a frog or two. My work is missing frogs. They’re faster than toads and won’t sit for photos as well, but maybe somewhere out there, there’s a crown shaped jar?

Well, it’s been a while, and I feel badly about that. Last year author Gianna Rosewood contacted me about “The Wrong One” and whether she could use the drawing on her book as the cover image.

I was totally flattered and sad that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want “The Wrong One” as an art piece to be turned into a book cover. That didn’t seem fair to the people who had bought it as a fine art print. So what I did is re-draw the image with slightly different specifications for the book. It turned out great! And now I have been published, though not in words quite yet.

Here is where you can order a copy. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m embarrassed – I want to read it, but time is always an issue. I also already have my “prince” – or more accurately the Mr. Frog to my Mrs. Frog. So, I pledge to read it in the next month and report back. Maybe my prince is still out there? Heh! At least putting this challenge to myself on the blog will help me get my butt in reading gear.

The original VS the book cover. You can see there are differences, but of course they are very similar. Two poor toads who weren’t the “Right One.” If kissing these guys grosses you out, save yourself some heartache and warts and read Gianna’s book!!

After a winter of writing and re-learning how to knit, I am back to drawing. My interests wax and wane, and definitely turn to other things in the fall and winter. It takes about a week after Christmas for me to be truly sick of winter, and so now I’m working on something springy.

A painted turtle with a toad on top of him with a butterfly on him. First it was just a toad on a turtle, but I added a butterfly halfway through. Here it was a week ago:

The background was lacking. In the reference photo, the pond behind the creatures is gross green. I tried to add some brighter colors but it still looked blech.

This is why I love Stonehenge paper. It takes abuse well. I tried adding some grass to the foreground and didn’t like that, either. So a couple erasers later I had this:

Doesn’t look too much different, except you can see the original top of the drawing better. I erased into the butterfly, toad and turtle so that the end result would blend better.

This is where Photoshop is invaluable. I first tried to colorize the background to see what I liked better. Some more reds helped, but I messed with the background so much it looked pretty messy. Finally I decided it needed to look more like water. A section of photo behind the animals gave me a much better idea of what I wanted to do. So here it is today:

And soon it will be finished. Thanks to Stonehenge for being so flexible and for Luminance pencils for being willing to cover most anything.