This is a fairly straight forward painting of a Wood Frog. Attention was on form and contrast. Focal is the eye and lip/side indicators of a standard wood frog.
Firstly I started with a 14x11 canvas and washed it with Davy's Grey and OMS (odorless mineral spirits). The OMS dried quickly and left just a touch of smoothness for all other paint. I spent about 20 mintutes drawing out the general forms of the frog with the Davy's Grey again - I wasn't worried about mistakes as its easily corrected by wiping it off. Once I got the structures down and I was happy with how the frog looked I rubbed off the background with a towel to removed the guides I painted and clean it up. The darkest of darks I painted first here. I set up the transitions between the highest areas of contrast also. You can see here in the digital this step. Shadows were put in kinda roughly. |  |
| Major forms are roughed in with an angle brush from a dominant color of rusty orange. Dark areas painted first with care not to get the darkest darks into the whiter areas. Lip and side of head forms painted it now as they are intended to be focal, but no specific details are here yet. Stroke is obvious, but much of the paint was done with a dry brush once the canvas had atleast 1 layer of paint. No blending yet. |  |
| Forms are finished up and some blending of areas has started. Slight refinements of shadows are made and a decision on the hue for them is decided. I picked a neutral blue-grey for them, but really anything is possible. I chose the cool shadows to contrast with the warm frog. All areas painted in with color as correct as possible. Wart areas and other details are not done at this step. No concern for background other than some of the shadow. |  |
Most of the blending was done first in this step as it caused some smeering into the background. The background is two layers. First layer is raw umber that was rubbed very well with a towel - dark at the top and bottom. I then mixed up a medium muddy white and carefully painted that over the entire background being careful to just get the tops of the canvas fibers where I wanted to dark to come through. Shadows fixed and repaired with finger blending to give some softness.
Frog details painted in carefully. Spots on belly, highlights, contrasts between forms, wart areas, and eye details all painted last. Areas of high concentrated color were painted on as well - The lateral oranges really define the shape of the frog. |  |
If you have any questions please ask via email or you can call me on skype. I hope that some of this info is useful and I'll add more demos in the future. |
