Mallard Duck Painting in Pastel

Here is my finished female mallard painting:

Title: "Take-Off"

Medium: Pastel

Support: Archival suede board

Size: 19" x 9"

And here's a close up of details:

read more about this duck painting on my website: www.colettetheriault.com

That beautiful speculum!

In this post I include a close-up of the duck to better visualize the feather detail. I am quite happy that most of the duck is now finished... I could barely wait to add the beautiful iridescent blue turquoise of the speculum! I kept that part for last...a reward of sorts, for all the hard feather work I had to do.

Although it is harder to achieve crisp detail working on the suede as compared to sandpaper, I find painting bird feathers much easier on the former.

Duck feathers

I had to take time off from this painting due to other projects but this is the latest update of the mallard taking flight. You can see that I've started adding the details of the wing feathers. Next session I will complete the mallard's back before progressing to the feathers of the wing tip.