In 2018, for my first gallery showing at Art in Bloom Gallery, I decided to try something new by creating a series of paintings for the first time. My Fruit Frog series, a series of frog species arranged with the fruit they were named after, not only helped me gain significant experience with acrylic paints but was far more successful than I had ever anticipated, continually maintaining its popularity and memorability. With how well the series performed, I felt it was essential I follow it up with another painting series eventually, with the first challenge being deciding what. Following the spirit of my Fruit Frog paintings, I searched on and off for other frog species with interesting common names, to see what groupings I could find. I found almost no examples of frogs named after vegetables, only a handful of species named after flowers or trees, but an abundance of frog species named after animals. Creating a series of pieces with multiple animal subjects would be more difficult than focusing on a single frog, especially considering how enormous these animals could be in comparison to the tiny frogs named after them. On top of that, I wanted to push past the white backgrounds of my Fruit Frogs and create fully realized scenes. However, I have always loved all animals, not just frogs, and I am always up for a challenge! So while my mother was working on her life-sized paper-mache giraffe Jazz, in the summer of 2019 I set my ambitious series in motion with a painting of my own giraffe and Giraffe Tree Frog.

While I had expected this painting to be difficult, I severely underestimated the challenge I had prepared for myself. Simply coming up with a composition that could balance a two-inch tree frog with a fourteen-foot ungulate was an intensive process, and things did not go any more smoothly once I finally laid out my subjects and started to paint. On the contrary, I was shocked by how rusty I had grown with acrylics after two years of focusing on other media, and I repeatedly stumbled, forgetting things that would have been obvious to me while working on my Fruit Frog paintings, like how quickly acrylics dry and how significantly they darken while doing so. Therefore, my first weeks working on this painting were spent catching up to my previous skill level and fixing up mistakes I had made, reworking warped proportions and straining to lighten my far too dark early coats. Knowing how much work it was taking me to paint the small Giraffe Tree frog when it took up only a fraction of my 14”x18” canvas, not to mention the first of what I had intended to be a series, grew increasingly disheartening as workdays passed.

Even more challenging than that though was the fact that I had to paint not only Giraffe Tree Frog and giraffe, but their distinctive giraffe-spot markings. Given this intense contrast in markings, I deliberated extensively about how to go about painting such patterned animals. I had already learned how difficult it could be to paint animal markings in such a way that they appeared to wrap around a clear form together, and I wanted to make sure that I was more successful this time than I had been previously. In the end, I decided that since both animals were mostly brown with a smaller proportion of pale lines, that I would start with brown first. So, once I was satisfied with how my brown tree frog looked, I sketched my markings with pencil and layer by layer painted and shaded them to match, having to fix previous attempts by widening and brightening them. While I do not manage it perfectly, and a bit of the once brown frog’s form had been lost, I finally was able to feel a bit of satisfaction in actually having what looked like a Giraffe Tree Frog.

 Fortunately, while the Giraffe Tree frog was strenuous and exhausting to create, painting on the giraffe started far more natural and enjoyable. Because the giraffe was in the distance, it could be blurrier and less precise than the tree frog, and having less pressure and more acrylic experience at this point meant I could let loose and enjoy painting its lighter, more straightforward head. For the neck and body meanwhile, I returned to my Giraffe Tree Frog strategy of painting it dark, then adding light markings on top. To my surprise, I actually had more difficulty trying to make the receded body look blurry and smooth than the closer head and neck appear clear, but in both cases I benefited from the experience painting the Giraffe Tree Frog had already given me. Finishing it up, I was able to have fun again with the more simple process of painting lighter legs and a tail and painting dark markings on top, which did not require as many coats or as much difficulty as painting light on top of dark did.

At that point, if this were like my Fruit Frog paintings, I would have been nearly done. However, I had decided from the outset that I wanted to push further with this piece, so I set out to paint the most complicated background I had ever painted at this point – a largely top-down view of a rainforest/savannah hybrid, blending the habitats of the South American Giraffe Tree Frog with the African giraffe. At this point, since I had not yet figured out what I would do for the leaf the tree frog rested on, I decided to take the logical approach and work from the background forwards, starting with the savannah grass. However, I quickly realized that I had no idea how to actually paint it. Savannah grass is made up of lengthy, easily distinguishable strands, especially when viewed from above. Therefore, how was I going to paint innumerable strokes of grass that were blurry in the distance? Well, I quickly realized that I did not have the ability to paint it exactly as it would naturally appear, so I settled instead for painting the midground and background grass as shapes of blurred, lighter grass and darker shadows. Only for the clearer, closer foreground would I more carefully paint each strand of grass distinctly. While this process did not go quickly, it at least went at a manageable pace and fortunately kept the savannah grass from becoming too overbearing.

After finishing the grass and getting to enjoy painting the background trees’ more colorful green leaves, all that was left was to figure out the leaves surrounding the Giraffe Tree Frog. However, this once again would require some planning. My main goal was to strongly establish the perspective in this painting through layering leaves and branches, to enforce the idea that the Giraffe Tree Frog sat on a leaf high above the giraffe’s head, and create a strong sense of scale. To do this, I made sure to paint the Giraffe Tree Frog’s leaf just as crisply as I had painted it, and created layers of increasingly smaller and blurrier branches and leaf clumps beneath it. Finally, by August 17, after painting nearly daily since May 28, the background was finished. All that was left to do was final edges and touchups.

Except… I did not have any more time to dedicate to this painting. School started on August 19, and with five online classes at UNCW I had no time left for artwork. Then after the semester ended, I had not only video editing for Art in Bloom Gallery to do but multiple commission to focus on. Finally in early January, though, I found two and a half spare days to look at this piece again. After a near five-month gap, looking at this piece again felt profoundly strange. I no longer could remember exactly how I had painted it, or everything I wanted to change or accomplish with it. It felt like I was a different person, taking over another artists’ work, and I was worried I would not finish it the way that artist would have wanted. On the other hand, however, it is precisely because I had more distance from this piece that I was able to view it not as a source of frustration but finally understand just how massive of a leap this painting was from anything I had ever accomplished before, and finally really appreciate and respect both the work that went into this piece and the result. I had never attempted to create a piece with two species of such different scales, with such complicated, contrasting markings, with such an extreme perspective view and with such a complex, full and layered background. Then, when I considered the fact that I had to relearn how to paint with acrylics, was painting with more detail and precision than I had ever before, and was dedicated enough to persevere with this piece despite how much I struggled with it and how many mistakes I had to fix… I finally realized just what an outrageous challenge I had set out for myself, and more than that, that I had actually mostly succeeded.

This painting is by no means perfect. While I fixed my proportions for the Giraffe Tree Frog, I noticed later that my proportions for the giraffe were also inaccurate. While I tried to mute the grass to keep it from taking away from my animal subjects, I ended up just leaching a bit of the life from my piece, with the grass actually harder to distinguish from the giraffe and showing up more. And this piece is so profoundly busy with all of its patterned, shaded layers that from a distance it is difficult to read. But when I finally finished the last strokes of this piece on January 5, 2021 and signed my name, I was able to do so feeling sincerely glad I had gone through the effort of making it, and excited to create more Animal Frog paintings like it to come using the lessons I had learned from my Giraffe Tree Frog.