The gang’s all here. I call them “Froglets”. I started making these during Covid. I was rather heading toward working in this size before Covid. I don’t know why. But one reason, which became more apparent after Covid struck, was that I do not have a LOT of materials on hand. Plus, everyone wants a cheaper frog. I tell them, you tell me what you can afford; I will tell you what size I can make. Size does translate, to some degree, into cost. Obviously, it takes less time to make such a frog. Also, I find it satisfying to get big results from small actions. Hopefully, the Froglets will translate that way as far as a marketing thing. (A marketing thang.) But, who knows. I do not know yet what all this “New World” via Covid has in store. I know artists such as me are suffering. We are simply a small segment of the larger segment of unemployed or semi-unemployed or maybe unemployed people out there.

With these small guys, one thing I liked when I heard it: The virus can last only 4 hours on copper. Copper related materials, such as I work with, that is, bronze, are similar. So, I’m thinking, this is a nice gift at this time. I do think folks are still buying gifts, maybe not as big as they have been buying: a gift on a budget. That is what these little fellows are.

I make them one at a time. Well, to be exact, I may make them in small batches. But, that said, they still get singular attention. Here is a group I started working on:

I make them kind of like a comic strip artist would make characters. It may be the same character with different expressions. That is what I am going for here.

I actually tried, well, I thought I would make a comic with my metal frogs. Then I thought otherwise. My focus is on making the frog, not on making a comic. So I stopped doing that. But it was a valuable experience to get a feeling for what I was trying to accomplish in the look and feel of my work.

I am very pleased with my froglets. I will continue to make them. Now, you have to know that I have been making human sized frog sculptures for as long as I have been making frog sculptures. So this is a nice change. I get a nice feeling because I can get more done – I can finish a frog sculpture. I also get to focus on details. In these size frogs, everything is a detail. So that is why I like to take close-ups of these frogs, similar to close-up nature photography. So you can see the detail with which I work.

Every frog I make one at a time. Even when I work in batches, still, each frog gets one-at-a-time attention, as if it were going in a comic strip. Each frog gets its own features. So this is not how someone works who sells a copy of the same thing, making it over and over. Each time I make it, it has its own personality.

It is especially not like a cast. It’s original art, in other words. These days, so many people sell saying such and such a thing is “handmade” or that it is one-of-a-kind when it really is not. It’s production line, assembly line… Well, it can be schlock. It doesn’t have to be. But it is not original art.

Some of these froglets can be found in the Frog ‘n Froglet SHOP! on this site.