Duck Stamp
To start this project I went through a list of ducks and looked up pictures of each one, then I circled the ones that I found most interesting to narrow it down. I ended up choosing the harlequin duck because I thought the colors and pattern of its feathers was really cool looking. Then I did a few sketches to figure out the general setup of the drawing. I decided to do two ducks to make it more interesting and have one be male and one be female. The males are the ones with cool feathers so I put that one in front. The duck in the back on the rock is a female harlequin duck and their feathers are just different shades of brown. I haven't drawn realistically in a while so I practiced drawing some other ducks on my sketchbook before figuring out how to draw the harlequin duck. I also did some research on harlequin ducks and found out that they are usually found in rivers in the mountains except in the winter when they move to rocky coasts. I started out drawing them on a rocky coast but I thought it looked more like a river so I added some grass in the background and made the water more blue.
Before I did the colored pencil version I was trying to do it in gouache paint because it would be good for blending and I thought it would look cool. I only did the water in gouache and then in class I tried it with water color and colored pencils which I ended up liking better. I started with the water that the duck is standing in and used darker colors and I think that part turned out really well but I couldn't really get it to look like that in the rest of the water. I did a light base of watercolors before using colored pencil so I could get the basic colors and figure out where the shadows were supposed to go. I don't use colored pencils a lot so it was fun to practice using them.
The elements of art that I included in this drawing are shape, color, and value. I used shape in the rocks and the pattern on the male duck's feather's. I used color by doing it in color pencils and choosing a duck with interesting oranges and blue on it. I used value on the female duck with the different browns on it and in the water with lighter and darker blues. I also used value for the shadows and highlights to make the orange feathers on the duck look shiny. The principles of design that I used in this drawing are emphasis, contrast, movement, and balance. There is emphasis on the duck on the left because it is bigger and has colorful feathers. I used contrast because most of the drawing is cool colors but the male duck has orange on it which stands out because it is a warm color. I added movement in the water by using lines to show how the water is flowing through the river. The drawing has balance because the duck on the left is larger than the duck on the right but the duck on the right is on a large rock.
It was interesting to learn about ducks for this drawing and I like how it turned out.
Links to the reference photos I used: