Sadly my old girl is over 12 and spends her days laying on the ac duct in the kitchen. Her heart and lungs are good and she still greets me at the door with a toy in her mouth and a wagging tail but she has lots of arthritis and struggles on the stairs. It is really getting to be time to let go.
July Workbench
- Thread starter B. Heitman
- Start date
I’ve been on a quest to make a good Can decoy. I cave made several that were darn decent but I will say this is the first one that I am proud of. I’m generally very modest but this one is tickling my fancy. It’s not completely done but I had to pause and pour a drink.
Attachments
Looks good! I have yet to draw a can head pattern I am satisfied with. I just can't get that slope down the forehead and to the tip of the bill right.
These are the first three of 37 decoys that I'm finishing a little detail work on this week. Seven of the remaining are wood ducks which are of course the never ending paint job. It's been really nice to get my son up to speed on a variety of species on the airbrush. He had never done anything other than mallards, wigeons and black ducks up till the last month. He had not dealt with some of the crazy poses I sculpt either, so he's had a steep learning curve lately but gaining more confidence all the time. There were a few times with pintail mallard crosses, canvasback hens, and those eclipse pintails that he just sent them back to my shop to paint. Now I only do the carving and sculpting and then send them all to Caleb for flocking and painting, then back for a little head detail on hens, blacks and wigeons.
four more this time, but the canvasbacks didn't need anything other than to clear the eyes. I'm kind of liking this division of labor, I would much prefer the creative side of making interesting poses to the painting part. I really like this offset head angle on the canvasback, just more interesting. We are doing 19 species right now and adding more regularly. My objective will be around 35 species with a range of poses which is around 80 at this point. I want to make sure that if someone wants 4 dozen decoys, there will be 48 poses.
I have a couple of heads sitting in my workshop that didn’t say Can to me. And I’m using a pattern.
I like the looks of that better than mine. This is the last one I did, couple months ago. Shipped it to SC recently. Only picture I have. On the flip side I was really pleased with the blackhead.
Cans have a very distinct transition from the head to bill where it almost looks like a continuous line if it were just a silhouette. So the transition you have on the bluebill is great and matches what they look like but the can should have a continuous slope pretty much.
Oh I know I somehow can never get my pencil to transfer it from my brain to the paper though!
Part of it I think is also how I cut the bills in on my heads. I just need to figure out how to adapt it to a canvasback so that slope doesn't get cut out. Again getting the knife to transfer it from my brain to the wood.