Artist's Note:

I love frogs and toads. I find them to have so much character and charm, and they always strike me as engaging little animals. I decided to paint this one because it looks stubborn, giving me the “Get off my leaf” vibe. So I couldn’t resist painting it. The red-eyed tree frog (properly known as Agalychnis Callidryas) is a tiny little animal habitating regions from Central America to the north-west of South America. Unlike some other colourful frogs, they are not poisonous and instead rely on their green body for camouflage and their bright red eyes to startle predators allowing their escape. They are carnivorous, surviving off eating a variety of bugs. To stay safe, they sleep among the leafy forest canopies where they can stay camouflaged.

My focus when painting this was on maintaining this sense that it was a stubborn little animal saying that this was its leaf and it was going nowhere. I found that the initial framing I gave it failed to convey this as it made it look too tiny in comparison to the large leaves surrounding it. By later cropping the image to the dimensions shown above, it really helped to push the notion I was going for. On top of this, I wanted to use speckling to give a sense of focal blurring while also highlighting the specularity of the frog’s skin. For more info on these little critters, see here.