Long lanky legs!

 

“Frog Legs”

Saddle-billed Stork

Graphite on 300# Arches watercolor paper, mounted to 1/2" maple panel and varnished

9 x 14 inches

“Frog Legs” is the first drawing I drew in my Stork series, a Saddle-billed Stork. It is a beautiful bird to watch in the wild they seem sleek but comical with their movements on those long lanky legs. They have a bright red bill with a black band and a yellow frontal shield which looks like a saddle.

As for most people, 2020 was a challenging year; for me, to put it simply, it was a loss of a business that I had been building for the last six years. I found myself in June 2020 realizing that my art school was most likely not going to survive the pandemic, and I spent the rest of the year working through the process of closing a business. During this time, I did not paint or draw except for instructional purposes for those students who followed me to online instruction. 

In January 2021, I found myself able to focus on my art again. I decided to start with a drawing, graphite pencil is my passion and revisit my 2019 safari to Tanzania by browsing my reference images from that amazing trip. While scrolling through the photos, I found myself stopping and focusing on a group of images with Saddle-billed Storks wading in a watering hole. As I am studying the images, I noticed I was laughing and smiling at the comical awkward dance of this one particular bird, like it was dancing on a set of frog legs. Then I zoomed in on the image, the stork had captured a frog, and it was still in its bill. I knew at that moment this was the inspiration for my reentry back into my beloved world of creating art.