Too Many Ducks

How I created a gift of luck for my husband - an entire sketchbook of ducks

Sketchbook Tour #1 | Too Many Ducks - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khKJmC7Y_8
Transcript:
(00:00) [Music] hi this is Donna welcome to my very first Sketchbook Tour on the very first Sketchbook I've ever completed this is also the first Sketchbook I've ever done from cover to cover with the idea that it would be aesthetically pleasing and the reason why this is my first one and I was able to do my first one is it's a gift I made this for my husband Curtis it took me all year and I gave it to him for Christmas so before I go into why ducks and show you through this Sketchbook specifically I want to talk about why I
(00:37) decided to do a Sketchbook of entirely ducks it's a common art lesson that if you want to learn how to draw draw the same thing over and over and over again it stretches your creativity and your knowledge and you start to increase how much you're able to see and how you're able to translate what into the page through your hands so I chose Ducks because my husband is a huge Oregon Ducks fan they're relatively simple and easy to draw and giving him this book at the end of the year allowed me to have something to do for
(01:15) him and not just for me this is too many ducks and it was done with absolute love and a tremendous amount of Joy went into this book figured I'd better learn how to draw a duck so I Googled how to draw a duck and came up with this method so this was my first attempt this is also my first attempt with watercolor in this book and here's where I realized the book doesn't quite handle watercolor very well I didn't let that stop me I kept using watercolor because I wanted to experiment with all different mediums in this
(01:49) foreign Smith's moon glow watercolor and in some places it's mixed with just a little of some brand of purple but I was just starting to learn about watercolor and Daniel Smith's watercolor was all the rage the moon glow brand specifically being a big lover of purple I decided to get it I'm really fond of this one [Music] no study on Ducks would be complete without a study on rubber ducks as well foreign I like the way the pearlescent paint shines in those bubbles I originally thought of a few jokes to
(02:43) put in here and this is one of them [Music] I know dad jokes neurographic art was really popular and I decided to do a neurographic version of ducks so there are two ducks in this picture and they're pretty easy to spot but if you can't see them directly look for the orange bills and the green heads foreign don't remember which brand probably prismacolor this is definitely a tutorial from the painter I really love and intended to have the nose breach the frame of painting I like when the art leaps out at you a
(03:44) little bit so this was intentional painter is a great acrylic painting tutorial Creator on YouTube I probably should switch stop to say that hardly any of these images in this book are my original creation I use lots of references Google searches other people's artwork painting tutorials online I'm not going to give you all of those references but when I can remember them like Michelle the painter I will foreign here's another I think this was also a Michelle the painter and it was a different kind of bird a
(04:29) pelican but I took the idea and made it into a duck really nice I like painting seascapes don't know if you can see it but yes little sunglasses on down there as he's resting on the beach [Music] [Music] this also definitely was a Michelle the painter tutorial I love her designs she's just got such creativity in the way she puts things on a page and what she chooses to highlight I have a lot to learn from her here's another duck joke these are both acrylic also acrylics here
(05:36) [Music] this was a turning point for me this I did this page on a flight I just started in this lower corner and started to kind of work my way this way through the design and you can see the improvement from this corner to this corner over here where I'm getting a little looser and more creative and I just love this page so much of these little Dancing Ducks here this one's cool with his in his group of friends this these two little ducksy he's diving for the fish he's about to get the fish I don't know who got it
(06:19) I love these little ducks back to back reading and this Duck's looking over his shoulder this just this page gives me so much joy this deck here with the suitcase is waving to this deck here I'm so proud of this page it was so fun and this is also the first appearance in this book of the Oregon Ducks so this is the Oregon Ducks fan I was originally going to wait until the very last page to do Oregon Ducks and then I thought it's just so that when my husband flipped through it he's seeing all these
(06:52) duck pictures but not quite getting why or not seeing it and then I thought I'm making this for him I need to put Oregon Ducks in sooner so here they are and yeah just sweet little ducks I just love this picture so much and I feel like doing this exercise helped me solidify what lines made a duck but also helped me really reach out and tap into my creativity and just have fun and be playful in sharp contrast the very next thing I did was I attempted Chinese watercolor and I didn't even have the right brush
(07:34) so I but I did it and the only thing I regret about this piece is this note that I put in apparently Chinese watercolor isn't my thing because in retrospect it's beautiful and I've found that when I look back on my artwork more things that and I find that when I look back on my artwork I am finding Beauty later on after the disconnect that I feel when my art doesn't match my idea when that Fades I can appreciate the beauty of my art so I love looking back through my sketchbooks and just remembering where I came from
(08:15) and how far I've come [Music] think this is a watercolor tutorial YouTube tutorial the channel I think is called let's make art I will try to find it and link it for you she's just the I don't know the trainer's name but she is a delightful Spirit really sweet and makes watercolor fairly easy this one is from a photograph that I took during a trip to Rochester New York so although there's some Rochester New York ducks and I think this is my first from a photo I got lazy here I was going to write up
(09:11) the full joke what's the duck's favorite ballet and the Nutcracker is the answer I got lazy I just read the punchline foreign this is a beautiful one also from a YouTube Ted tutorial and it has a textured background even though the proportions of the bill is a little weird I love it I just love this one [Music] some Oregon Ducks fan art this came from I think it was a set of stickers or magnets that they sold [Music] Decoy wine is really special it's the only wine that my husband went out of his way to find a bottle of wine that
(10:03) was regularly available and good and he got the recommendation from a friend of ours so he could bring me red wine on a whim as a gift so I'll probably always love Decoy wine as my favorite because of that this guy I'm pretty sure he's a goose that just snuck into the book we won't tell anyone you can pretend to be a book this is a not original at all if you can believe it I found this image online [Music] I don't know who the original artist was and I'm sure you could probably Google it if you're interested but I thought
(10:42) this was just the most incredible painting and I had so much fun recreating it here [Music] somewhere fan art Disney ducks here's a little story about the Peabody Hotel ducks where they I'll just read it every day at 11 A.M the Peabody Hotel in Memphis several ducks are escorted from their Penthouse home on the rooftop via the elevator to the tune of a Souza March they walk through the lobby on a red carpet and spend the day in the hotel fountain so this was an actual photo I found online of the guy that the Ducks are
(11:27) mine [Music] we are huge Star Wars fans in this house so when I found this join the duck side Oregon Ducks painting I had to recreate it in the book here's a little more of my sense of humor [Music] this is one of those drawings that you'd see in magazines can you draw this and it is both a duck and a rabbit depending on how you look at it so duck grab it I was so tickled when my husband opened this present and was looking through it and got to this one and said wow it looks like Howard because I used how would the duck image
(12:19) to model the face hugest compliment he possibly could have given me right there this one is done print ink tense blocks I really really liked using them and I think I give up too soon I think I should go back not on this design but in general when I use them and put in more layers and get more detail in there [Music] he's not only an Oregon Ducks fan he's also a Miami Dolphins fan so when I saw this rubber ducky with the Miami Dolphins on it I had to put it in the book and this is a photo of our actual
(13:02) pool thermometer foreign [Music] Oregon has a Oregon State and University of Oregon one of them is the Ducks one of them is the Beavers so this is a nod to the Rival Oregon schools go Ducks [Music] some more fan art [Music] image came from paint my photo if you don't know what paint my photo is it's a great site where photographers upload their designs to to a resource that they let artists have who can go and paint and the artists can then upload their designs into it as well so you not only see the original photo but you see some of the
(14:02) paintings or drawings that other people did of that photo this was one where the paintings were almost even more beautiful than the photo and I used one of the paintings to create this one [Music] some work on realism here for me I live in Las Vegas and we have a neon Museum where they take old neon signs and make a kind of a graveyard out of them for people to explore and there was this duck from in the museum it's one of I think there are maybe 10 signs that they light up throughout the area and this is one of
(14:52) them that is lit up so this I happen to stumble on a lunar eclipse one night I woke up I went outside and there it was at two o'clock in the morning that's from a photo that I took of the eclipse itself it was just this beautiful red orange moon you can see it a little better and I figured I would take a picture of the duck taking a picture of it which is exactly like me so in a way that's kind of a self-portrait these are decidedly not self-portraits foreign [Music] early on in this book I had this idea
(15:36) this was one of the first things I desired to put in the book and I had the idea and I was just afraid to draw it was complex um this is I love this it's so Whimsical I'm really pleased with the way it came out you never know what's happening under the surface ducks are otherwise some more Oregon Duck art foreign [Music] and I tried here some I have toned paper that I've wanted to try but I haven't picked it up yet and I thought why don't I just do a toned painting so I laid down the background and then used black
(16:26) and white and a little mix of it a little gray to create another mid-tone to create this one and I like it it's good practice for me it didn't take very long and it was practicing putting down what really is important to convey a story and I like I really love these two paintings foreign ducks I think these were from paint my photo as well my husband is a big fan of Pepsi so I wanted to create a version It's called Pepsi and you can see there's a little duck head and tail on the Pepsi logo definitely a lesson in realism for me
(17:14) it looks pretty good but I have a long way to go before it would be realistic I got a little bored so moved on to this little guy this is called a rainbow duck could not resist those colors speaking of color I used my rainbow pencil and created some loose sketches I really like this one sitting on her eggs this little guy on his back is so much fun and purple is not only my favorite color but Curtis my husband's as well so I use the purple ribbon to go through got some fun duck playground items [Music] I'm also working on learning and
(18:14) painting all of Bob Ross's paintings so I had to get landscape in here I actually showed this one to Curtis before I put the ducks in and then went back in and added the Ducks foreign this is a fun little spread I wanted to create and play with some Botanicals and every one of these is a photo of a flower or plant that Curtis got me I just I think they're so sweet the stuck on little tiptoes this I love this too I have found that I look back on these spreads that I created from my imagination and had so much fun telling
(19:02) the story are the ones that make me happiest more fan art we've got a little Rick D's Disco Duck and Howard the Duck here I loved making this Egg and I love how white it looks even though there isn't any white in it at all we're near in the end here I wanted to put in another Oregon Duck before we went this cute little Christmas duck opening a present there's a little bit of sheen on the ribbon you can see there it's a little shiny and I just love this stocking [Music] and here's the last page this is
(19:48) actually the first one I did in the book I started with making an Oregon Duck for him and then in the process I thought maybe he wants some stickers we're also fans of all birds coming from the Philadelphia area I had to drop in an Eagles helmet as well into the sticker section so there we have it that's too many ducks my very very first completed Sketchbook a love story to my husband and I just look back on this with so much joy thanks for taking the store with me