Steve Sanford
Well-known member
All~
A friend just asked me for suggestions on painting a Hen Butterball/Bufflehead. Having never painted one, I instead went to my Patterns drawer and my Paint drawer in the shop and sketched this - using one of my Drake patterns. I tried to keep it simple with just 3 colors - all Behr house paint sample jars from Home Depot - my standard gunning paints.
The head, back and tail are all straight "Intellectual". It's a dark warm Grey - very similar to what Herters used to sell as Wing Grey. (Were I painting a fancy hen, I would blend in some brown - Raw Umber - on the cheeks and crown.)
The only real trick is blending from right on the neck - where I start with a dirty White - then going aft to the a pale Grey "Graceful Grey" breast - then to the medium Grey "Elephant Skin" on the sides and upper and lower tail coverts. As you can see from the Behr codes, these 3 Greys are all from the same color series. They are useful for many other species - so good ones to have in your gunning bird paint kit.
The Blue-grey bill is darker than the drake's. Finally, the size of the White cheek patch is, I believe, larger in first-year drakes (which look like hens) than in true hens.
Since the dead-of-winter post-season is a fine time for paainting/re-painting gunning stool, I thought there might be others here a duckboats that could use this information - hope this helps!
SJS
A friend just asked me for suggestions on painting a Hen Butterball/Bufflehead. Having never painted one, I instead went to my Patterns drawer and my Paint drawer in the shop and sketched this - using one of my Drake patterns. I tried to keep it simple with just 3 colors - all Behr house paint sample jars from Home Depot - my standard gunning paints.
The head, back and tail are all straight "Intellectual". It's a dark warm Grey - very similar to what Herters used to sell as Wing Grey. (Were I painting a fancy hen, I would blend in some brown - Raw Umber - on the cheeks and crown.)
The only real trick is blending from right on the neck - where I start with a dirty White - then going aft to the a pale Grey "Graceful Grey" breast - then to the medium Grey "Elephant Skin" on the sides and upper and lower tail coverts. As you can see from the Behr codes, these 3 Greys are all from the same color series. They are useful for many other species - so good ones to have in your gunning bird paint kit.
The Blue-grey bill is darker than the drake's. Finally, the size of the White cheek patch is, I believe, larger in first-year drakes (which look like hens) than in true hens.
Since the dead-of-winter post-season is a fine time for paainting/re-painting gunning stool, I thought there might be others here a duckboats that could use this information - hope this helps!
SJS
