Confession: This week’s blog was supposed to be a tribute to vintage advertising art, but that fell through and I was hard pressed to scrape through my ideas list which had little to nothing I could just slap together. The problem then became, “What the heck do I write about?!” The answer came when I realized this past week was Kermit the Frog’s 67th birthday. Not exactly a milestone year, but then @StarmansArt Tweeted this incredibly sweet shout–out.
I am a huge Muppet fan, and Kermit is my personal patron saint of sanity and my true north example when it comes to good leadership. Plus, I get a significant and disproportionate amount of likes when I post Muppet stuff so I thought I’d try and see how much Kermit the Frog art I’ve done that I can find. Let’s do this!
Now I drew Kermit a lot as a child, like a lot. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find anything before the 90s, so we’re starting there. Kermit appeared more in tribute rather than in focal portraiture back then because you didn’t get a lot of girls phone numbers like that. Lesson learned though: everybody digs the frog.
Top left: Kermit (and Robin—not that Robin) drawn with a mouse in Microsoft Paint, circa 1995. Bottom left: My Commercial Art semester final illustration in graphite, 1996. Right: Kermit makes a cameo in front of Wayne & Garth whilst I pretend to take notes in Community College, 1997.
2000–2008
Oofa, okay, please understand that every illustrator likes to experiment, especially when they are learning Photoshop for the first time and fresh from graduating. I was an avid member on the Muppet Central forums way back in the early aughts and was anxious to share some fan art. I was having a bit of an identity crisis as a Muppet fan and wanted to stand out so I drew a lot of weird shit. I’m sorry to curse, but you can see for yourself, even I didn’t know what I was trying to pull off.
I was huge into Anime and wanted to desperately mash that with the Muppets. The kawaii Kermit front and center was the pinnacle of those efforts. I was so darn proud of him (I still am now that I think of it). It was the halcyon days of online interactivity, Photoshop held no serious or practical value, and i can has cheezburger was a staple of daily life.
Keeping with the Anime vibe, I pushed hard on this idea. 2008
2009–2012
Commissioned work from Joe’s wife, Sarah.
It was around this time I actually started to try and learn how to properly use the tools I had at my disposal to create art that was actually, you know; good. Adobe Illustrator was fast becoming a tool that I relied on heavily, but it also was a time that I got to know a very amazing human being by the name of Joe Hennes; Co–owner and editor at ToughPigs.com. Joe was instrumental in not only getting me online exposure (something I am eternally grateful for and remind him of regularly) but also to actually draw, you know; good.
Despite being over a decade old, The Immaculate Jim, 2010 remains one of my favorite pieces of fan art I’ve ever done.
In 2012, my wife and I went on a cruise. She said to me, “I want this vacation to be really romantic!” so I drew several cards that I gave to her each night. This was one of them (and my favorite). See? Ladies totally dig the frog.
The Muppet Madness Tournament kicked off in 2010 and it was a huge collaborative effort between myself, Joe Hennes, Ryan Roe, Steve Swanson, and Ryan Dosier. It also got decent press online, so understanding my work would be seen by a ton of people, I brought my A game to the table.
It was during this time I started using the full capacity of the Adobe Creative Suite to push my illustrative work further. Kermit was the natural guinea pig to test different techniques on.
Some of the attention the tournament got.
2013–2014
It was during this point in time that I was starting to get noticed. I don’t mean popular because that still hasn’t happened. I mean that actual Muppet people and Muppet adjacent people would make my acquaintance. It was an exciting time, and I was fully immersed in the fandom as I never had been before. The Muppets—I mean the actual people involved with the Muppets—started to know who I was, and I was getting opportunities to know them too.
Transitioning back to working almost exclusively in Illustrator again, I began keeping a consistent color palette for all the Muppets.
I always had a full bin of ideas, but many of them never made it to fruition. One day I plan to finish a tribute to Dan Jurgens Superman the Man of Steel # 37 (DC, 1994) Zero Hour comic cover.
One hundred thousand years ago in 2013, there was a very brief moment in time where an app called Draw Something rivaled the popularity of even Wordle today. I used every opportunity I had to draw the Muppets.
2015
In 2015, I began to steer more towards drawing Kermit my own way rather than on model. Now that didn’t necessarily set a precedent from there on out, but it marked a moment where I considered my fandom and my relationship with it completely my own. In many ways, I had arrived… Exactly where? I can’t say but it smelled a lot nicer and people stopped trying to trip me when I went to the mall.
At this point, I was also creating all Muppet art with the express purpose of showcasing it on ToughPigs.
The most exciting thing about 2015 was being commissioned by Bill Barretta to create individual pieces as gifts for the cast of The Muppets ABC television series. I’ve never ever shared any of those pieces until now. This was done for Steve Whitmire.
2016–2018
At this point I learned that drawing Kermit was becoming gratuitous. I knew if I posted an illustration of him, I’d get attention, so admittedly I was throwing stuff at the wall just to see what would stick.
The bottom right illustration was a thank you gift to Mike Quinn, the performer of Nien Nunb from Star Wars and Kermit’s regular “right hander.”
2019–Present
When I draw Kermit nowadays, it’s usually a therapeutic exercise. Drawing him off model or otherworldly is the next evolutionary step most of the time. My friend and fellow Muppet cupcake enthusiast Zach Woliner commissioned me to do a bunch of Kermits as various pop culture movie iterations for his KermDubs YouTube channel.
Muptober eventually replaced Inktober for me.
If this makes you uncomfortable, then I accomplished what I was setting out to do!
You can’t get a better model than this. 2016
Also, a big thank you to Richard for inspiring this post and being so kind. I’m more than twice his age and I’d wager he’s already drawn Kermit more than I have!