Bullfrog Catching

When I was a boy I loved to go out after a rain and hunt for frogs. I did not know what to do with the critters after they had become my prisoners trapped inside a jar except to let them go. The fun was just catching the little creatures. When I went to my grandmother's or my cousin's houses in the Oklahoma countryside, bullfrog catching was even more fun. You could lose yourself in the quiet stillness of the evening after a summer thunderstorm. The landscape would become a magical, mystical, peaceful heaven with only the sounds of an occasional splash in the water from a jumping frog to their croaking to the gurgling noise of my feet stepping in the muddy water which all broke the caressing silence of the evening as the light faded. Art students today know very little, if none at all, the techniques of the old masters. Most students of this generation spend most of their time designing on the computer and are losing the skills when it comes to drawing or painting. One such technique is the application of washes or very transparent layers of thinned paint. Some call this glazing. Especially in my watercolor paintings, I had developed a much different style than my drawings. I would apply layer over layer of washes or glazes. This technique gave the paintings a rich atmospheric effect, an inner light or glow. Oddly enough, this painting technique began to set the foundation of my drawings that followed. I began to use similar techniques in the way I applied the pencil to drawings, using layering. When most art students were focusing on the subject matter of abstracts, celebrities, sports figures, and comic book characters, I was more interested in landscapes and people around me in everyday life. That kind of subject matter would be my foundation in art for the rest of my life.