My Mother grew up with Kenneth Grahame’s famous novel The Wind in the Willows, and in turn so did we. I still have the most beautiful illustrated copy of this incredible book. I am also convinced it was from this very book that my mother’s obsession and fascination with all things frog began.

If you haven’t read The Wind in the Willows, do yourself a favour! A beautiful book filled with mysticism and adventure tales, beautifully depicting the natural world of the region in imaginative prose. The central characters include Mr. Toad, Mole, Rat, Mr. Badger, Otter and Portley, The Weasels, Pan, The Gaoler’s Daughter, The Wayfarer, and rabbits, which are described as a “mixed lot.”

Now recently turned 80 my mother has a rather substantial collection of frogs. As an avid gardener her idea of the garden gnome is a frog and on a recent visit to Cape Town I was presented with some rather sad looking, tired old “garden gnome” frogs that were in need she said, of a little rejuvenation! Acrylic pour to the rescue with some post pour painted embellishments.

This was a rather solid pottery frog sitting on a lily pad. I am not sure it had ever been painted but it is now!

I love the expression of this fellow, with his rather smug, self satisfied smile. He was balanced on 4 water lilies and was looking a bit sad and sun bleached. I thought we would go for psychedelic glitz with poisonous looking colours and glitter encrusted water lily pads. His smug smile has now become a rather self important one!

This frog is one of her favourites. The one she calls Toad after the character in The Wind in the Willows. The backseat driving, and not so subtle advice around getting the pour just right was about the worst I have ever experienced from a client! 🙂 Trying to control an acrylic pour, which for the most part has a mind of its own was not helping my anxiety, and my mother’s determination to control the outcome just made it worse! Thankfully a good few thousand km’s distance between the 2 of us allowed me to tell her politely to hop along now, and ignore the barrage of WhatsApp instructions I kept receiving in what she thought were subtle suggestions designed to inspire me and not irritate me! (I hope you are reading this MOM!!!! 🙂

I did an initial acrylic pour in all metallic paints, and then with what was left in the cup dribbled and drooled paint over certain areas, with a little black down the back centre of Mr Toad. When that was dry I painted on the eyes and mouth, as well as rubbing the frog in a black wax to make his warts and rather bubbled, knobbly skin stand out.

To prevent the wax from wiping off with the final varnish coat I sealed it first with a spray varnish and let it dry before adding a more resilient varnish for outdoor use.

And finally my favourite… A bit of a Jeremy Fischer looking frog. He was sitting on a rock with a little flower tucked in underneath him. In the pre-poured version the flower and foliage were not highlighted at all, but were rather just part of the stone he was siting on. I wanted to make the little flower with its foliage a feature too. I used a gold interference paint to get the lighter belly, hands and feet, as well as a green interference paint to highlight the little bumps and knobbles on his back.