Part of my problem is that it is hard for me to get excited about painting decoys I didn’t carve. The bodies are some Herters foam decoys I inherited that I burlapped. The heads I carved. But my heart is in diver decoys and they are all gunning decoys.
Black duck head
- Thread starter Kevin Puls
- Start date
I sure get that, painting other people decoy designs is a real pain, not to mention the fact that I just don't like adding value to someone else's artwork. There is nothing realistic about painting some of the plastics these days, the relief carving makes things twice as hard, ignoring the speculums. I'll only put a speculum in my decoys if the wing is out and it would naturally be showing, still totally unnecessary for a hunting decoy. I still paint a couple hundred decoys for decoy dancer that come from Higdon. That's about all I want to do, they are far more difficult to paint when you have to ignore all of the feathers. Ducks are smooth, adding all that other stuff so the chinese can do a rub and buff paint job is just silly.
Are the feather details on the body of this made up of many individual brush strokes?
I can't speak for Mark but it looks that way to me.
My $.02 on black duck decoys is usually less is more on the body. I've always painted mine with just a solid dark brown with a little bit of detail on the back and tail to break it up. To me the detail is so subtle its hard to try to put much in without it being too much. Some guys can do it and Mark is one of them. His blacks look great. I say this as am literally looking at one right now I'm trying to finish painting.
Mark Belknap
Member
Hey Kevin,
Yes the body feathers were just small individual strokes. A lot of my older black cork birds , I didn't bother with any feathering on the body and they worked just as well. Head ticking I used a small pointed brush and also a stiff, bushy stipling brush and applied some dry scrubbing with very little paint to add some contrast. Every once in a while I'll sell off my rig, a little extra detail makes them way more attractive to buyers. I use different sized stipling brushes fairly often. It gives color changes a softer edge when I'm using acrylics rather than a hard line.
Yes the body feathers were just small individual strokes. A lot of my older black cork birds , I didn't bother with any feathering on the body and they worked just as well. Head ticking I used a small pointed brush and also a stiff, bushy stipling brush and applied some dry scrubbing with very little paint to add some contrast. Every once in a while I'll sell off my rig, a little extra detail makes them way more attractive to buyers. I use different sized stipling brushes fairly often. It gives color changes a softer edge when I'm using acrylics rather than a hard line.
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Mark Belknap
Member
I can honestly say I went overboard on this one
I’ll be honest that’s right up the alley of what I want to get to some day.
I compromised tonight.
