Duck Stamp

Fulvous whistling duck

9x11

Mixed Media

For this Project I chose to work with the Fulvous whistling duck, this duck is a migrator bird that lives in the southern areas. I liked the look of this duck, I liked its blue beak and feet and its brightly colored feet. I wanted to have this duck in the water. Originally I wanted to do this image in acyclic paint, but I began and realized that I really didn't like the way it was turning out, the water was to dark and being at home I didn't have the right brush size that I wanted to work with, so I changed to colored pencil, then to add more detail I moved to water color and to finish it off I ended with acyclic for the high lights.

I began this drawing by looking at all the different pictures of the ducks and figuring out which position I wanted the duck to be in, then I moved to sketching out the duck and planning where I wanted things to go. next I did something that I wish I had held off on, I started the duck. I created the duck by using lays and layers of colored pencil to build up the feathers of the duck. Then I moved onto the rest of the image, I wanted to use water color for the background because I felt that the colored pencil was to controlled but the water color just flowed like water, I really liked the way that the water color looked and added to that water. I ended up using 7 different colors of blue green and purple to get the water a good color. As I was looking at the image I realized that it was a little lacking, there was only one duck and nothing else. So I added some ferns and things that fit in with the habitat of the whistling duck. Then I went through and added some highlights with acrylic paint.

Overall I really enjoy the duck stamp project, every year its fun to look at ducks and practice my scientific skills. I think that this duck image in the weakest one of all, I think the compositions is the weakest in this one, I wish that I had done another duck it would have been stronger.