cmkosemen
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Turning a pet frog into a Lovecraftian deity
🕑 Added 2025-09-28 19:32:28 +0000 UTCGenerous patron B. G. came to me with a great commission; to turn her boyfriend's "chud son named Jabba, an African bull frog" into a wise, strange, alien deity.
My process with this commission proceeded as before. First, I drew some very loose sketches of Jabba in ink to better get a handle on his form, and to explore how I could transform him.
The sketches eventually grew more detailed and complex. I liked the idea of giving it four arms, and a loosely humanoid bodyplan.
There's a real joy to making these loose, fast, colourful sketches.
Ultimately, we decided on the sketch shown above. I then prepared a big digital collage to further explore and detail this concept.
The collage was subtly inspired by the insane architectural fantasies of German painter Wendel Dietterlin (c.1550–1599).
I used this collage as the basis of my final drawing.
The raw scan of my final ink art. Note certain details like the shadows cast by the frog piles, and the "CHUD" necklace - which I later composited in.
This was the final line-art. In the next step, I added digital screentones, and fixed some small anatomical details.
Final screen-toned version.
Finally, I painstakingly painted the entire composition using the good old "Kyle's Real Oils" brush set on Photoshop 2021.
Close-ups of the final illustration.
And that's that, everyone! This has been a nice free glimpse of my artistic process. Please support me on Patreon to see more commission process posts like this - or even to commission me art of your own!
All the best,
M
UPDATE
I also created an aquatint print out of this illustration. I printed out the screen-toned version on art paper, and manually colored it with watercolours.
UPDATE II
The aquatint print was delivered to its chud-frog owner as of late October 2025 - he looks rather pleased with his graven image!
:)
Comments
Mike Traynor
Awesome! I know I'm not the first to say that, but it's just the right word.
C. M. Kosemen
Yep - he was never far from my mind :)
Emily Davis
Awesome! Reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua.
