As many people know, I originally started taking photos as a way to get my own reference images for drawing and painting. It turned out that I fell in love with photography as yet another expressive art form, but I do still draw and painting whenever I get a chance. I try to work on something for at least half an hour every day, although that doesn’t always happen. I have always really liked doing the pen and ink style drawings, but they are very time consuming, so I decided to (figuratively) pick up a paintbrush again, too. I say figuratively because I do most of my work now in a digital program (not AI), but it is surprisingly realistic in how the brushes and pens perform. This is the first painting that I’ve done in quite a while, so it seemed appropriate to choose a subject that is really special to me and to me there is nothing cuter than these little squirrel tree frogs (Hyla squirrella). I always look forward to seeing them out and hunting on my windows every summer. It is fascinating to see how quickly they can move once a nocturnal moth or insect has been spotted. They can literally go from stock still to having finished a full on pounce in less than the blink of an eye. And once they commit to the hunt they rarely miss, either.