Painting a Frilled-Neck Lizard (Alphabet Superset Project Part 6)

Part 6: F - Frilled Neck Lizard

Hello! Welcome to my post about my 6th instalment of the Alphabet Superset project. I am actually a week behind at this point but, progress is progress and I had a lot of fun painting this stunning lizard. If this is your first time here and you have no idea what the Alphabet Superset Project is or why this is part 6, the first post in the series might help. But also, here is a quick recap:

Every week since the first week of September I have been painting an Australian animal or an animal that visits Australia that I’ve seen and preferably one I have my own photos of. There was a one week break in between after week 4, during which we went camping and saw some more cool animals that will feature in this series. I am also an extra week behind because of travel and being a bit unwell. I will continue doing this until April 2024 (hopefully) as part of a project/challenge called the Alphabet Superset, the brainchild of Youtuber (among other things) Campbell Walker aka Struthless. Each week I am painting a different animal according to the letter assigned that week following alphabetical order i.e. week 1= A, week 2= B, week 3= C etc.

My main reasons are to have a consistent means of slowly painting all the wonderful animals I’ve been lucky to see while we’d been camping around Australia in 2021 and 2022 (with a short stint in Darwin) and on other little walks and nature excursions.

To find out more about the project, the best source is the Alphabet Superset page itself or Campbell Walker’s video about it. To see more of my paintings as part of this challenge and my progress, you can search for Alphabet Superset on this site or click on the Alphabet Superset category here or above.

Now, here’s part 6: Frilled Neck Lizard

What are Frilled Neck Lizards?

The Frilled Neck Lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii) is the only member of its genus (Chlamydosaurus). Their name comes from their most distinctive feature a frill of scaly skin around the neck that opens up and out like a mane or halo around the lizard. When it is not erect, it folds back “like a cape” (phrasing from the Complete Guide to Reptiles of Australia), which is a really apt way of describing what its frill looked like each time we saw one.

They are found in tropical woodlands all across the northern third-ish of Australia as well as down the Queensland coast to Brisbane. Their colour can vary from gray to shades of brown. Both of the lizards we saw were shades of brown. The first was a more reddish brown while the other was a light gray-brown with a bit of an orange tone around its head.

References and for a bit more information about the Frilled Neck Lizard:

Where had we seen them?

We’d seen a Frilled Neck Lizard twice on our camping travels. The first time we saw one was on Ngauwudu (Mitchell Plateau), in Wunambal Gaambera country, near-ish Punaami-Unpuu (Mitchell Falls). We were driving and Scott amazingly spotted it. We just had to stop to see it and take photos. It was gorgeous, and as an aside, Ngauwudu and everything we saw and were able to experience in Wunambal Gaambera country was amazing and mind-blowing, from the beautiful woodlands, the wildlife, the beautiful rock art and the stunning Punamii-Unpuu.

The second time we saw a Frilled Neck Lizard was in the Fitzroy River Lodge in Fitzroy Crossing in the Fitzroy Valley. We spent a few days there at the end of September 2022 hunkering down out of the rain before going to see a bit of Danggu (Geikie Gorge).

Why Paint them?

Deciding on the F category was a bit of a challenge. Other options were Freshwater Crocodiles (saw quite a few of them up in the Kimberley), Frigatebirds (saw tons of them on Christmas Island) but I went with the Frilled Neck Lizard because well, it was a bigger challenge but also its the one I felt like painting the most.

Seeing the Frilled-neck lizards was particularly special - I had wanted to see one since I was about 10 and first learned about them. I'd also tried a smaller sketchbook painting at the end of last year, but I wasn’t very happy with it, so this was the perfect opportunity to give it another go.

Process - Part 1: Find Photo References, Sketch

I had tons of good reference photos for the Frilled Neck Lizard thanks to Scott. We were both stupendously excited to see them, especially given Scott had never seen one before then either. So, I just had to pick a couple to put together for this piece.

Deciding on the background was fairly easy for this one because I had a vivid memory of the sparse and beautiful forest of pines on the Mitchell Plateau where we had seen the first Frilled Neck Lizard. In fact I think I took just as many photos of the setting as the lizard itself (especially once I knew Scott was happy to take tons of the lizard himself).

Composition also worked itself out, with wanting to paint the lizard climbing the tree exactly as we’d seen it. The only thing for me to do then was to pick a couple of photos to put together for the background behind the tree.

Process - Part 2: Work out Colours, Paint the Background, Start Painting

As with the previous few weeks, the majority of the colours I used in this painting were Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache colours.

For the Background Sky:

Shinbashi/Geisha Blue (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache)
Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Ground:

Bengara/Iron Oxide Red (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)
Oudo/Light Ochre (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)

Trees:

Rikyuunezu/Rikyu Grey (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)
Miscellaneous browns left on my palette, mostly Susutake/Smoked Bamboo (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)

Tree leaves and other greens

Moegi/Leek Green (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)
Senzaimidori/Pine Tree Green (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)
Primary Yellow (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)
Oudo/Light Ochre (Holbein Artists’ Gouache) mixed with miscellaneous browns on my palette

Frilled Neck Lizard

Susutake/Smoked Bamboo (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)
Bengara/Iron Oxide Red (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache)
Oudo/Light Ochre (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache)

General Colours used in most parts of the painting:

Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)
Zinc White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)
Primary Black (Holbein Artists’ Gouache) (already on the palette)

These sets of colours is much more condensed than some of the other paintings and the more I paint with these sets the more I am working out which paints are definitely going into my general selection of colours. Rikyu Grey has been a particular favourite and I have used it in pretty much every painting I’ve made in this series except the first two which were made before I bought the two Irodori sets.

Process - Part 3: Blocking in the Big Shapes, Adjusting as I go

Once I’d painted the background, it was time to block in the ground, foreground trees, lizard and then slowly build out the trees in the mid-background. I did this bit as I went, rather than with a specific plan of where everything in the background should be.

Process - Part 4: Adding the Details

There was a lot less finicky detail to work through in this one. The focus of the detail in this piece was all on the beautiful Frilled Neck Lizard, with just a bit of texturing for the tree trunks.

The lizard took a bit of thinking through because at that small scale, getting the texture of the lizard’s skin was difficult. In the end, I decided on achieving the effect through little dots to create the light and dark areas of the scales, before blending them a little.

Process - Part 5: Refine, Refine, Refine

This part always takes the longest, but when I get into the flow of it, it is also usually the most fun!

And here is my Frilled Neck Lizard piece finished!

Lessons Learnt & Thing I Might Try Going Forward

Scales are difficult when painting pretty small.
I’m really enjoying the style this series is slowly bringing out for me.
While I still absolutely love gouache, I couldn’t help thinking about how much easier and more effective it might have been to be able to work on this digitally especially for the detail on the lizard. It has been a theme in this series for me - a desire to explore digital drawing and painting more.

Next: G- Gouldian Finches

We were so excited to see the colourful Gouldian Finches at Lee Point in Darwin when we heard they’d been spotted there, and we did get really lucky! While I have painted one before, I’ve started a composition which will represent the numbers of finches we saw in the reeds.