Artist Statement

For this piece, we were given the prompt to create a scene using one or more ducks in their natural habitat. We could use adult, young, female, male, and all sorts of native ducks from North America. The duck I choose was the Northern Pintail. This project will be submitted to the Junior Duck Stamp challenge where we compete against many other juniors/ kids to create a theme or message about the conservation of ducks and their habitat. There is also an adult competition where they create stamps for hunters to buy to fund this conservation. Its a great experience and very known across the country.

For this piece, I used graphite and colored pencils. I was traveling when I created this so I didn't have much variety of materials that I was able to use. I chose colored pencils because they are easy to use, I am very family with them, and very neat and do not smudge. I like the cleanness of this material and its easy ways to spread colorfast.

I started by sketching out a replica of my work on a piece of drawing paper. I then went in and started with the grass and saw where the placement should be. I wanted to include rock, water, mud, and a female and male duck as well. as you can see the female ducks as less colorful than the male ducks. I wanted to draw both to create variety. I used black, brown, and blue colored pencil for the female duck in the water and blue, brown, orange, yellow, and black colored pencil for the female. For the grass, I used a variety of green, yellow and brown, while for the water and mud I used blue, green, and brown.