Kadamaian Stream Toad

This is a rendering of the 'Near Threatened' Kadamaian Stream Toad.The resource was taken from ARKive.

This is another project from school. The parameters were as follows: On illustration board Use Watercolor Use Colored Pencil Blend the colored pencil over the watercolor with some sort of solvent. Render with perfect precision without success (this part I made up for effect)

I like how it turned out mostly. For the duration of the project I was freaking out about how bad it was, which it still is, but there was no need to fret as I did. I overreact very well. The toad himself is absolutely dashing- a specimen of pure delight. The leaves on the other hand are almost as if someone took a crayon to the board.

Also, I should mention, the composition is a bust, which no one-not even my professor- had mentioned to me before hand. Jay loves to critique, but the most I get out of him is, 'Yeah, sounds good, just work on it and it should be fine.' That's what he says, then my grade comes around, and that's a story in and of itself. There is also a component of my openness to critique. This goes back to a revelation I had in grade school.

I had very few friends before my junior and senior years, and I always wondered what it was about me that was so different. Without too much consideration I could name many several things that set me apart from my peers. Still, my wonder lingered, until it hit me. After I realized that there were people who were willing to be my friends, and that they truly did accept me as a person, my stand-off-ishness was queerly apparent.

Teasing was never a part of my daily experience, but neither was friendship, and that confused me to no end. Finally it had come to me, the reason wasn't my difference, it was my seeming arrogance. I didn't talk to people, so they didn't know how to talk to me- part of that is an awful social awkwardness that has slowly been dying.

So here is to the Kadamaian Stream Toad- the metaphor to my 'near threatened' social awkwardness. Hopefully, the soon extinct social awkwardness, but perhaps it would be best to have a resurrection of the Toad, and to see the beauty in what it is.