Finally finished this guy up after a long time on the bench. Sugar pine body and basswood head.
Close-up shot of my latest mallard hen with wet on wet paint blending.
Here's one of the first wood ducks I've done in a few years. After so many mallards this year, this was a ton of fun to paint.
Here's a wood duck I've been carving. It's got an antique, east coast style to it. I've done carved eyes in this bird to maintain a classic feel. It's the first decoy I've done with carved eyes. I used a nice piece of old-growth red cedar from Tom Kelly for this one.
Here's a pintail hen I did in September for a trading competition held at the Columbia Flyway show in Vancouver, WA. In this contest, all the birds are thrown into the pool, tested for self righting, and then judged for first, second, and third as normal. However, after the contest, the winner gets their selection of birds to keep, then second place gets their choice, and so on. I came in 4th place out of 12 or so entries. But this particular contest is about creativity and having some fun.
Here's a mallard I put outside so I could look at it from a distance for a few days. This time of year it's pretty rainy here and I thought it looked good all wet.
Here are a few shots of some in-process birds I've got going.
I haven't posted in some time, mostly because I've been working on competition birds, and I don't like posting them while I am competing them. The good news is that I'm doing ok in the competitions. I won second best in show for gunning birds with my low head mallard at the Core Sound contest in December. In February I headed down to San Diego for the PSWA show. I ended up placing in the best of marsh, but my standard head mallard didn't make it any further. Then it sold so that bird is done competing.
My mallard won the third best of division for the IWCA working decoy contest at the 2011 Columbia Flyway Show on September 10th, 2011. This is a picture taken during the judging of the "best of puddle ducks" portion of the competition. That pintail in the background is also one of mine. It won a blue ribbon as best in pintails.
Here are some close-up head portraits of three birds. I love how the oil paint blends when it is wet.
I've spent some time this summer practicing with oil paints. Here are a few I completed recently.
Here's a Barrow's goldeneye I finished recently. I haven't done many diver ducks in recent years and I had fun doing this one.
Here's a miniature black brant I carved as a donation for the Washington Brant Foundation. The bird was inspired by a carver named Jim Manning who is prolific making these cartoony decoys. Years ago I won a hooded merganser Christmas ornament from him which looked similar to this in style but has a red and white winter hat and a loop to hang on the tree. Hopefully this makes a few extra bucks for the Brant foundation.
My pintail won best of show in the Novice/Intermediate IWCA Style division at the Oregon Waterfowl Festival.
This hen is doing pretty well so far. It just won 2nd Best of Show in the IWCA Amateur division in the 2010 St. Clair Flats decoy show.
I just finished an antique style merganser and I created a mini-demo to show some of the steps. You can see the demo on the Merganser Mini Demo page.
This one has been in the works for a while now. I base coated it ages ago, then set it aside. I finally finished it up this week and I'm pretty happy with the results.
Here's that wigeon pair I was working on. All painted and keeled up.
Here's a “poor-man's” shaving horse I whipped up tonight. This is the true sense of function over form. There is nothing pretty about it, but it doesn't rack at all, and only took me about 30 minutes to complete. It's nothing more than a single 10' 2x10. I cut a 3' section for the seat, two 2' pieces for the legs, and a piece about 33" for the stretcher to tie it all together. I assembled it with nothing more than 3" deck screws.