All Things Flocking

[Tom Hanson]

This helps alot! I've been struggling to know when I'm done with a deke. Keep telling myself it's a duck decoy and it's fine - but inside I'm not happy yet. Redoing some mallard drake heads now. Having trouble with drake bodies and blending color to it. Mainly the flock brown to airbrush rusto brown and the flock black. Just can't seem to blend it. Just looks like 3 blocks of color. For hunting dekes keeping the flock black and white colors true seem to be priority so blending off of them is something I haven't done very good yet.

 

[Tom Hanson]

Asking my wife if it looks good doesn't help cause she just says "well it doesn't look like the one in Don's pic!" I stopped asking her!!! Lol.

 

[William Reinicke]

This helps alot! I've been struggling to know when I'm done with a deke. Keep telling myself it's a duck decoy and it's fine - but inside I'm not happy yet. Redoing some mallard drake heads now. Having trouble with drake bodies and blending color to it. Mainly the flock brown to airbrush rusto brown and the flock black. Just can't seem to blend it. Just looks like 3 blocks of color. For hunting dekes keeping the flock black and white colors true seem to be priority so blending off of them is something I haven't done very good yet.

Dont be afraid to add some black and white into the gray. When im doing the front chest, I dont worry about a tad of over spray sometimes into the gray. It gives it a touch of blended between the gray and chest rusto brown when im doing mallard. Also, let some of the detail work in the chest overlap the line of the chest you laid down. That will also help blend, leaving some gray coming through but some of that detail work get into the gray. Don is a master at this, and I often envy his ability. But if you look closely you can see that. Also here are some birds I did last year and you can see how much white and black I put into the gray to work some of the detail into the top feathering. Again, I’m still playing around and working on my own airbrushing, and hopefully one day I’ll be as good as Don. I definitely didn’t start with a light enough gray flocking in my mallard this last year. Plan on fixing them this year and repainting. So I’ll get another shot at this. My line work still isn’t near as sharp as it needs to be but I get the contrast I want for decoying birds at a distance. End of the day, that’s my main goal.

 

[Don Mintz]

It's looking pretty snazzy. The blend from brown to grey on the chest is perfect, It's all about decoying birds. I just think about what triggers a variety of waterfowl species , usually that means contrast and field markings.