The Bullfrog

Thought I’d share my latest species drawing, the American Bullfrog! I chose this creature because as summer has begun coming to an end, I’m hearing these guys more and more in the river behind my house. I’ve already done a Species Journal on the American Bullfrog once before, but in the old format.

I loved this species journal, and so I wanted to redo it in a translatable format for my new book project. (see previous blog for more on that) So I broke out my trusty Prismacolor pencils and started in on a brand new bullfrog. I absolutely LOVE how this new one turned out.

I’m so proud of the textures I added in with this piece. I love experimenting with new techniques and textures as I work, which is where the light lines in the back and shoulders came in. I added the deep black shadow at the last second, actually! I like to leave my work sitting on my desk for a day or two (which may be playing with fire, living with a cat and all) after I complete it, so I can look at with a more critical eye after the original impression wears off. After a few days of pondering, I decided that the whole piece needed more weight, and added the shadow in. I think it’s also a nice throwback to the original species journal.

Me working on the frog in early stages!

In almost all my work, my favorite thing about it is usually something really specific or tiny, and that’s definitely true for this piece! If you look at the back leg, you might notice tiny little highlight lines around the knee area. That happened totally by accident, when I was doodling on a completely separate piece of paper, and accidentally scraped some of the pigment off with a sharp pencil. I noticed the pattern it left, and thought that it was the perfect texture to add some contrast to the back leg, which had been sort of flat and dull before. So I hesitantly attempted to recreate it, and fell in love with the result. Here it is a little bigger… it turned out a little pixelated, but hopefully you can still see what I mean.

This piece made an appearance at the Love of Labs Indiana Booth I did (see this blog post I did for more) and will eventually show up in my Species Journal book! (yay!)

In the meantime though, I hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I do, and thanks for reading!