Maine JuniorDuck Stamp

Artist Statement

There wasn't a huge meaning behind this piece. I really wanted to emphasize the ducks versus the habitat. I could've done a more detailed background, water, etc... However, I didn't want it to take away from the ducks. For a while, I liked the solid or foggy background idea. At first, I was planning on doing a yellow sun but realized that I wanted to go for a different look, representing a misty morning. It's a calm/lazy setting but also introduces the idea of alertness and awakening in the morning with the sun trying to peek through the fog.

I used colored pencils, graphite pencils, and watercolors to create this piece. I used color to create balance throughout each duck. I used line and space to create emphasis on the ducks. I used value to create movement and a pattern of the fog/clouds in the background. I used form to create unity and variety with both the clouds, ducks, and tree.

This project has definitely taken me the longest out of all the ones we've done this year. Luckily, I spaced it out. I generated sketches for a while. I also looked up all of the species many times, deciding which would match or which I would enjoy composing. I decided on a whistling duck and stiff-tailed duck. I chose the whistling duck because in the picture it looked so happy, I could tell. It's also just a beautiful duck with a long head. I additionally liked its positioning and how it was standing on one foot. I chose the stiff-tailed duck mainly because of the beak. It's pretty insane how it can have that blue of a beak. It's beautiful. But I didn't do the most common species of the stiff-tailed ducks. I did a stiff-tailed lake duck. These only have black heads instead of the ones with white and black heads. I like the boldness of the black and it's a color I work with a lot. Then I had to generate how I wanted them to be standing along with the background. I knew I wanted to incorproate the whole whistling duck. Stiff-tailed ducks don't like being out of the water so a lot of the pictures I had were mainly showing the head in the water. This gave me the idea to just have its head sticking out in the foreground of the whistling duck. After a lot of experimentation, I had a sketch down. I talked about the background above. I think it looks professional and again, emphasizes the ducks. I went very slow when using the colored pencils and drew lightly at first. This made it easy to quickly erase if I messed up or wasn't satisfied with the proportions or value of something. Surprisingly, I struggled more with the background than the ducks. I knew I wanted that foggy look but when I first did it I wasn't satisfied. I revised the whole time with the shadows and highlights. I thought I was done and almost turning it in. However, I was unhappy with it and didn't want to feel that way after all the time and work I put into it. So I took it home again and decided that the whistling duck needed to be standing on something. I had had a tree in my original sketch but never really got to it and didn't think it would look good. But once I added it it really evolved and came together. I was finally happy with it. Overall, this was very time-consuming however I'm really pleased with the overall finished piece.