One of my favorite birds that I have found and photographed thus far is the wood duck. The males have these green headdresses and red breasts and the females are gray with an iridescent patch on the wing and a white outline around their eyes. They are smaller than the typical mallard duck, and can be found in more wooded streams and ponds within the park. Given the time of year, most birds are nesting right now and the wood ducks are no exception. Although I haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact location of the ducks nest, there is a couple that I have been keeping tabs on. I have noticed that the female is pretty much foraging constantly, and the male follows her around keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings. My guess is that she is getting ready for nesting.

The first painting I did was of the female on a small 4″ x 4″ canvas. I am proud of the rendering of the actual duck, but I think the background was a bit of a cop-out. When I did the male the next day, I thought a lot about how to abstract the water, especially because I really wanted to include the duck’s reflection. I took some inspiration from Neil Welliver and thought about how the simplify / abstract water into broad flat shapes. Though once I finished the painting and stepped back, I realized that I didn’t create any sense of space. This encouraged me to put these two paintings together into one, and so I set off with my camera, looking to get a good reference photo of the love birds together.

Conveniently, someone had given me a cross-section of a tree, a grounds I thought was quite fitting for a painting of wood ducks. With this painting, I really planned it out in the underpainting — I created a map for myself. I wanted to render the actual ducks similar to how I had before, but I wanted to evolve the background from the painting of the male duck. I spent a lot of time on this painting, and I am proud of how it turned out.