I had a hard time getting the colors in this portrait right. I did it in acrylic on a 15- x 22-inch sheet of gessoed 140-lb. watercolor paper. I’m not painting on that flimsy stuff any more. Watery paint kept gathering in the valleys of buckling paper. I’m beginning to prefer acid-free illustration board or 300-lb paper that will take almost anything. Canvas is good, too, but then I’m stuck with the format–I can’t crop out anything if the composition doesn’t work. And sometimes it’s fun to run some pastel over things, which I doubt would hold well on canvas.

I took my finished portrait over to show Tom this morning and he was, as I’d hoped, highly amused. Anyone who knows Tom would recognize him here, and just that I find pretty funny.

Life on the Toadtanic is part of a series I’m doing celebrating friends (and maybe me). (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)