Here's a drake mallard I carved recently. It's made from tan cork and the head is carved from white cedar. I painted it with acrylic paints. I'm especially happy with how the iridescent look of the head came out.
A couple of firsts
This latest decoy represents a couple of firsts for me. For one, I've never done a black duck before. Secondly, this is my first decoy painted entirely in oil paints. I've been strictly an acrylic paint user up until this point. I was intrigued by some of the soft blends I've seen with oil paints so I decided to give them a try. Oil paints sure do behave differently than the acrylics I'm used to. There's some things I really liked about using the oil paint, but there were many more things I did not like. It's probably just a matter of getting used to the different techniques needed to use oils. I'm not giving up, but I'm certainly not going to give up my acrylics yet.
This bird actually started off as a mallard hen. I had a very simple, but very cool feather and paint layout that I was really liking. Then I had to go and try to "improve" it and things did not go well. I eventually decided just to paint it up as a very simply black duck to try to get a better feel for the oils. I'm pretty happy with the outcome now.
You can see some additional photos in the black duck gallery
Drake Mallard
Here's a drake mallard I finally finished up this past weekend. I've been out of town for the past few weeks so I haven't spent too much time in the shop. I had this only about 95% complete before the family and I went to Texas, and I was able to put the finishing touches on it this past weekend. The body if made of tan cork and the head is white cedar. It's painted with acrylic paint.
You can view full size images in the mallard gallery of my decoy page.
