Duck Stamp

My artwork is a scientific drawing of a wood duck. I chose this duck because of the colors on its head. The feathers on the head look almost reflective and it really intrigued me. At first, it was very hard for me to decide what landscape to do. I ended up doing a landscape with water, which was out of my comfort zone, but I like the way it turned out. glad I chose the wood duck and I am excited to submit it to the contest.

To make this work I started with a sketch of my duck. Then I used colored pencils and watercolors. I did use some markers and some gel pens for the highlights, but it is mostly all colored pencils. I chose colored pencil because it was what I was most comfortable working with. I did push really hard with my colored pencils so that there was no white showing. I found that doing this also made it easier to blend the colors together.

This piece took me a long time. First I researched my duck and found a few references to use. Then I started with a rough sketch of my duck. I drew my duck in a few different positions before I chose this one. I changed my landscape so many times that I didn't know how the duck should look. Eventually, I started to slowly fill in my duck with color, starting with the head. The background was probably the hardest to get right, and I quickly realized that water is very difficult to draw.