Duck Stamp

Artist Statement

The main idea behind this duck was to create a realistic image of a duck. We were allowed to pick any duck off a list supplied by Mrs. Medsker. I picked a masked duck because of the way the duck looks like he is wearing a face mask as he has covid. I picked two pictures one for the duck and one for the background, I combined these together to get a duck swimming in the water. The water is meant to look as if it is wrapping around the duck. The shadow of the duck is squashed so you can tell where the sun is. I was trying to make the sun before sunset. So the shadow of the duck is more squashed and closer to its body than it would be if the sun was further down.

To create this art I used colored pencils. I used colored pencils because I really enjoy the way they look when finished. Sometimes the colored pencil gets blotchy because it clumps, to resolve this I just pushed down harder. Colored pencils use many layers before you get a finished look. This meant it took a lot of time to get the colors to be smooth. I only used one other material during the whole process of making this. I used a higher sharpie pen. I used this to highlight to the eye. Eyes are shinny, so to give it a more realistic glow of an eye I added a highlight to make it come to life.

This art was one of the more complex art I have created. This was complex because of how much detail it required. First, the bird required me to take time on each individual part. From the wings and making them darker around the edges to the shadow in the water and making sense of how to blur the duck. The biggest problem I came across while creating my artwork was the background. I didn't want my background to be pure blue. Finding every shade of blue that is close to the main color was very difficult. Some of the pencils looked the exact same. Some looked like they would be the exact same but were completely different. This made making my water difficult because it came out looking mostly blue when I used several blues.