This little guy is probably my favorite thing that I’ve drawn in the past few weeks. Maybe because it’s inspired by weird, antique anthropomorphic animals in advertisements, which I find really charming. Even though it’s getting toward the muddy brown season of early spring, I thought a lot about the frogs in the animation Over the Garden Wall as I worked, so it’s strongly inspired by that, as well!
I drew the sketch and covered the entire spread of my little sketchbook on the first morning. The next day, when the wash was completely dry, I added colored pencil over top. I kept my colors desaturated: all of them have neutral shades added in so that they have a grayish-brown tone. My darkest shadows are deep maroon red, with shell pink as my most brilliant color. Lastly, I added the clouds after I came back to the sketch the next day and thought that it needed something back there.
My favorite part of this sketch is once again how the colored pencil looks when it’s layered over the watercolor. As long as the underlayer is completely dry, it’s such a fast way to get a color sketch looking nice!