Duck Stamp

For this assignment, we were given the opportunity to submit a piece of work to the Duck Stamp competition. Our criteria was that our piece had to include an anatomically-correct water bird and have no border on a canvas or paper with the dimensions of 9 in x 11 in . I wanted to take a somewhat impressionistic approach to my piece, so I chose the Mottled Duck to be my subject. They spend most of their time in marshes, and I thought that their feather patterns would look nice in that impressionist style. I used a 9 in x 11 in sheet of canvas and began by tracing by duck. I used acrylic paint as my material, and my technique was using choppy, quick brush strokes with a lot of paint to execute my desired style. In contrast, the used a much flowier, softer technique on the water, to look more realistic. Overall, I am very happy with my piece. If I could go back and change something on my Duck Stamp Project, I might have chosen a bird with less small detail in the feather pattern, as I found it hard to make my piece as accurate to the bird as possible with the impressionist style.