Duck Stamp

The subject of my drawing is two American Wigeons. One of which is male, one of which is female. The background is water with reflections from the ducks. The setting is meant to be a pond or lake. I made this with colored pencil, graphite, and an electric eraser on Bristol paper. I used line to show shape, color to show value. Value and shape to show the form and texture of the water and duck.

I used informal balance of focuses, and selective focus on the duck in the foreground. I wanted too have a very soft focus on the background and other duck. I used high key lighting. This project started with two pictures of ducks which I put together with a drawing program, krita. Then, I added boxes on my printed reference and drawing picture. From there, I penciled out the basics. After that, I drew some of the water. At this point I realized I started the water wrong, so I used my electric eraser to start over. Then I drew the entire thing, added highlights and finished burnishing.

The meaning behind the artwork is that we need to focus on conservation. This relates to my life because I have improved a lot from last year, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. My artwork could be stronger if:

• I finish blending the background
• I finish the feathers in both birds
• Create stronger highlights and shadows
• Fixed the area around the duck's head
• Increased the saturation
• Made the foreground less blurry
• Fixed the water in the background