This latest decoy represents a couple of firsts for me. For one, I've never done a black duck before. Secondly, this is my first decoy painted entirely in oil paints. I've been strictly an acrylic paint user up until this point. I was intrigued by some of the soft blends I've seen with oil paints so I decided to give them a try. Oil paints sure do behave differently than the acrylics I'm used to. There's some things I really liked about using the oil paint, but there were many more things I did not like. It's probably just a matter of getting used to the different techniques needed to use oils. I'm not giving up, but I'm certainly not going to give up my acrylics yet.

This bird actually started off as a mallard hen. I had a very simple, but very cool feather and paint layout that I was really liking. Then I had to go and try to "improve" it and things did not go well. I eventually decided just to paint it up as a very simply black duck to try to get a better feel for the oils. I'm pretty happy with the outcome now.

You can see some additional photos in the black duck gallery