Duck Stamp

This is an assignment in which we researched and recreated a scientifically realistic scene in which a duck of our choice was depicted in an appropropriate way with a background to match the duck. We were given a list of ducks to choose from and then we picked a duck that interested us. I had never heard of most of the water fowl on the sheet so I looked them all up and found that the King Eider duck was what interested me most. It is a beautiful duck with a bright, bold and luxurious sense of style that is found up and down the northeastern and western coastlines of North America and Europe. I didn't know how else or what other material would be better for scientific realism than colored pencils, and watercolor. My prefered medium is acrylic paint however I don't think I'm skilled enough yet and I know that it would use an absolute heap of paint.

This was really difficult and a super annoying artwork to create and the piece was insanely time consuming. However the pride that I have received from creating a realistic piece with zero background in this department is really nice and I'm also really impressed with the actual King Eider duck itself. There is no way I would ever even dream of doing this project on my own and part of me is kind of glad that we did this. I also liked using colored pencils in a way that looked good. There is no real big idea behind this project because it is an assignment however I really like the idea of the money raised in the duck stamp process goes towards preserving wildlife, and this is something I didn't know existed as it doesn't seem like something any government would really push for.

This project as I have mentioned before was a really difficult task to complete and using the mediums that I chose made it extremely time consuming as well. However it does look good, at least I think it does. A big challenge was getting the feather patterns on the duck corect as well as making the water look realistic. These ducks look super cool but a pain in the butt to recreate because they are so intricately adorned in their waterproof feathers. Another big challenge was using colored pencils, these are something I haven't used in a long time and I forgot how annoying they are to use. I also don't have a pencil sharpener so I sharpened all of them by hand with a swiss army knife which also proved to be a major challenge. I really like King Eider ducks themselves and for some reason they remind me of Gucci, Prada or some other European fashion house and they look like they belong on the cover of Gucci Mane's Woptober II album.