Artist statement: One thing that guided my work was my observation of the American Wigeon and the colors and dimensions I was striving to cover with watercolor and colored pencil. I was also trying to think of what I could use to make the work differ from the main source of the image I was using by changing the background of the image and where the duck was placed and so on. It was a lot of sketching and then I just went with what I saw through a couple of images. I had the duck in a almost not exactly sitting position and I made it so you could see the American Wigeons duck foot so it would seem like he is either sitting down or about to get up and I also wanted to make it seem like the image was coming at an angle however it wasn’t easy so I just did my best.

I used watercolor and colored pencils to try and get the colors down and at one point I experimented with the colored pencil and I colored in the inside of the bird and then I pressed my eraser down and erased it so that the colors would be a little bit more smooth and more faint. I also used several duck images to go from when in the observing part of the work process. It took several images to get this down and then at one point I just tried imagining it in my head as what I wanted it to express out as.

I went through observing the several American Wigeons I had and then went through trying to reimagine those photos to get a sort of combined image that would represent the American Wigeon in a way to make it look realistic and then started sketching and once I liked what I sketched I filled it in with color using both watercolor and colored pencil for different parts of the image and I then experimented with materials and tried different things which happen to be mentioned in previous paragraphs of this artist statement. I got some basic color down without going all out and then began to erase the lines made by my pencil to give it a more smooth look. Once done that I finished it off and then I took a photo of it and then ended with posting it.