Ink Frog

Indian Ink on Paper - 297x210mm - 2011

This is the first proper drawing with ink and brush that I ever did. I used super tiny thin script brushes and had no clue what I was doing. I did really short strokes, a little frantically. I think I was listening to a lot of Dark Throne when drawing this.

Before doing this frog my drawings were always only pencil outlines, really thin outlines with some line details inside. I did attempt to shade one or two drawings with graphite. I was always afraid of ruining my drawings, inks and markers were permanent. Graphite was not. I wasn’t going to progress if I kept to the same thing forever. I went out and bought some ink chosen at random, Sennilier Indian Ink – my favourite black ink, I still use it to this day. I’ve tried other inks since but none have the same deep blackness as Sennilier.

It took 6 months to complete. An A4 drawing these days will take me anywhere between 3-5 hours these days. How I spent 6 months on this I have no clue. I only figured it out by looking at the progress photos taken with my old phone. I say the most likely culprit is me being a lazy/timid/distracted by work.

I hope I’m still drawing frogs in the future. I’ve never thought drawing frogs was a bad life choice. I regret not learning to draw other things, but I’ve never regretted a drawing I’ve done. I hope that’s the same for anyone that’s created a piece of art. Being embarrassed by the work not being as good as you wanted comes with the territory of creating, but it would be a shame for those creations to never exist.

This frog is still one of my favourite pieces I have made. There is something about it that grabs me more than other frogs I’ve drawn and it holds a special place in my heart for being the drawing that started my path of using ink and brush and developing black and white. I’m still discovering new ways to create black and white artwork and this drawing is the seed that everything I’ve made since has grown from.