Duck Stamp

For this project the goal was to create a composition including the North American waterfowl species for the Duck Stamp Competition. There could be no border, signature, or text. The paper could only be 9" x 12". I chose to do a drawing of the Emperor Goose. I chose this goose because I liked the pattern of the feathers. After doing some research I learned more about their habitat (in the summer, tundra and in the winter, rocky shores and mudflats). In order to create a reference image we had to select a background image and crop out ducks to place in the background. I wanted to include water and rocks in my background so I chose a photo that depicted this. As for the geese I chose to do one standing up and one hunching over to create an interesting composition. There was no visual differences between the male and female emperor goose so I did not choose a specific gender. I did not include a baby emperor goose as then the background would have changed to low marshy tundra where the emperor goose nest.

To begin I lightly sketched the rocks, the horizon line, and the positions of the geese. I first drew the rocks in the background shades of dark grey. I then began on the sky. My reference image (which I created using photoshop) was originally very dark but I chose to depict the sky a lot lighter, which in turn made the water lighter too. For the water I used a mixtures of dark blue, two shades of light blue, light grey, dark grey, and black to create a wavelike texture. The water was the most time consuming as it has so many layers. I created the clouds with different shades of grey and blue. I burnished different shades of blue to create the sky, so it did not just look like one shade of blue. Next I colored in the rocks surrounding the ducks using black and gray to create a rocklike texture. The geese were the hardest part and I saved them for last. I did the standing up duck one first and carefully traced the patterns of the picture to create a realistic version of the ducks. For the beak and legs I used a bright orange but then went over the color with a medium gray to mute it. The second duck which is hunching over was harder to draw as the shape is hard to get right. If I were to do this drawing again I would fix the head more. I think since I had already drawn in the rocks and burnished the colored pencil it was hard to go back and erase to create a sharper incline of the neck.

Overall this project took a long time because of the amount of layers needed to burnish the colored pencil. I chose to use colored pencils because it’s not exactly a medium I’m comfortable with. I really wanted to push myself to use colored pencils to get better at blending them. This whole project was out of my comfort zone though. Although I like looking at realistic drawings they are not my strong suit as I like to stick to designs and manipulating shapes or text. I like the outcome of this drawing though. I always have room to improve with proportions and blending the colored pencils better but I’m pretty happy with this piece.