I love the background on this artwork, an out of focus bush rock with some amazing colours.

I started by saturating the watercolour paper and painting with a very diluted paint watching it bleed into the paper. Because the frog was rather dark I wasn’t too careful painting close to the edges.

I should have been more generous with the water as it dried too quickly on a rather warm day and I didn’t get the soft look I was after.

Now to start painting and undercoat of the stick, as you can see I have just completed a small section of the stick on the left hand side.

I loved so many aspects of this painting I couldn’t quite decide which part I wanted to paint next. So I did a little bit more on the stick then I got suck into painting the frogs eyes.

Now I was hooked on the frog once major parts of the artwork start looking photographic. A little bit of white and blue and all of a sudden the frog starts getting a wet look. The little hands start looking so delicate and have a slight pink look to them.

Close up showing some of the fine details and a very fine brush. This is before I got to use my even finer birthday brushes I bought myself.

I often get asked how do I get so much detail and its just time and fine brushes. I start by painting a section of the frog and look at what I have just painted and think can I create a smaller brush stroke or dot.

95% of the time just by using a smaller brush will give you finer details and if you want even more details use less water.

So another few days and I gradually finish the frog constantly looking at the frog in sections to get the details and then as a whole to get the correct colour. Once I think the frog is finished I just add a few bits of colour scattered over the whole frog.

As an example I added a little bit of green to all the legs nose and back and a similar pass with light brown.

Last to finish off the artwork was the rest of the stick, I think this took another whole day. The whole painting took around 50hrs + over 9 days which is rather a lot for one of my paintings on white paper. I normally only spend this much time on my black label artworks.