This is a painting of frog eggs from the vantage point of being with them in the water, looking up to the surface, past the floating spawn, to the undersides of the lily pads.

I started this in the spring, as I watched the tadpoles develop, but the process I chose to execute this idea had many steps and required drying time.

First a 18″x18″ sheet of BFK Rives paper was adhered to firm backing. On that I brayered a layer of water-mixable oil paint, which was then topped with Diane Townsend dry pastel ground (available here). Then I painted the background on top of that, carving through the lily pads for texture and pattern to the oil below. This took a long time to dry fully.

Now months later, I could continue. I had been cooking with bok choy, and my idea was to stamp the frog eggs from the lovely pattern on the cut cross-section bottom end of the stem of the bok choy, for a spiraled rosette pattern contributing some additional texture, in the desired round shape. Then I’d paint pastel on top of that. I did the stamping with black gesso, and you can see small portions of that step remaining visible inside some of the eggs.

Finally, I finished painting the frog eggs in pastel. The top player is 97% pastel, so by convention, this work is identified as a work of pastel, and not one of mixed media, even though there are layers of non-pastel.

See the entire work above and details of it below.

Purchase the original painting here.

Obtain prints and merchandise of this image here.

What do you think?