Duck Stamp

My goal with this project was to accurately show a male red breasted merganser. I didn't complete the background or a second duck, but in what I did finish my focus was on correct colouring and working on blending colours cleanly to show what the ducks really look like. The different feathered patterns were difficult to get the way that I wanted them, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

I chose to use coloured pencils because they allow for more blending and precision in colour while still also allowing for a lot of detail to be added on top of everything else.

I originally had the duck positioned differently, but I repositioned it to fill out the area above its back more nicely, which I think made much better use of the negative space. I focused a lot on the blending of colour and the texture in the feathers of the duck because I wanted it to look more or less correct and be recognizable as a red breasted merganser.