Duck Stamp

For this project our job was to draw the water fowl of our choice. For this piece we were mainly honing in our skills as scientific illustrators. I quickly noticed that during this project it was very had to draw scientifically because of all the detail that you needed to have. The first step in this project was that we had to look at images online and decide what species and type of waterfowl you wanted to draw. For this I chose to draw a mallard duck. I chose to draw a mallard duck because those are what I have seen the most so that it what came easiest to me. Once we had our bird of choice picked out we needed to do a little research to see what type of environment they lived in and create two different sketches. I chose to draw the duck swimming because that is where they are most commonly found in lakes. I also chose cattails because sometimes they are in marshes.

For this the materials were rather loose. The first material that I chose to use was marker. I used this for the water and part of the duck because it gives my work a richer color. The next material I used was colored pencil. I used colored pencil because it can get you the most detail. I quickly learned that the more layering you do the better. The thing with colored pencil is that it takes a really long time just to do one small area. The paper that I decided to use was drawing paper because all of the other papers were too textured.

For this project the process was rather lengthy since these drawings needed to be so detailed. All in all the project took about three weeks. For this project the research that I did was I studied the mallard duck for a little bit. This involved the habitat they lived in, what they eat, and their migration patterns. For this project the practice that I did was during my sketches. I made multiple sketches because the more you do the more you remember it and it became easier to draw the duck. For this project I revised what I was going to do in terms of the landscape. For example I was originally going to have the duck standing on land but then decided that it would go better in the water with a sunset. The only experiment that I did during this project was that I started to layer the materials and this is a trick that I have never really done but I think that it makes the colors look better.