Good news everyone!

The wood duck from my demo is finally done. I took a ton of pictures during my detailed paint and I'll get them all posted after Westlake.

California Open Results

I sent a couple mallards to the California Open show last weekend. They were both entered into the working decoy category. I didn't have anything quite ready for the IWCA Style contest. I took 1st and 2nd in mallards and the drake went on to win 2nd best of marsh. I don't have any pictures of the birds with ribbons on though because both of them were sold at the show. Now I need to get carving since I don't have any working birds ready for the pool contest at Westlake.

Here's a picture that I got from the show though. Thanks Grant

Setting up the new shop

I spent part of the day today setting up the new shop. I'm really having to re-think how I have things set up. At my last house I basically had unlimited space to work with. I sold off all of my big tools before the move. I'll re-aquire some of things I need as I need them. I just need to figure out where they'll go first. 

Power is big thing I'm dealing with currently. Right now, I've only got one 15 amp circuit available to me with no room left in the panel. I can make it work if I get another 20 amp circuit. Looks like a call to the electrician is in my future.

Here's a couple pictures of what I'm working with now. Clearly I have a ways to go in my setup. I'm thinking about setting up a temporary paint area in a free room in the house since I really don't have any available horizontal surfaces to use in the garage yet.

Finally into the new house

We've finally settled into out new house. It's about as far away from our last place as you can get, in Seattle. I'm starting to realize how spoiled I was with the amount of space I had for my last shop. There are no basements out here. I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up a portion if the garage now. Some compromises will have to be made. So far it's pretty great out here though. We left several inches of snow and freezing temps in Michigan. Tonight I was grilling in a t-shirt. I'll trade snow for rain any day.

Some in process stuff

We're packing up the house and I haven't had too much time to spend in the shop as of late. Here's some stuff I've got in process. I was especially curious to see how mobile posting works with my new squarespace app.

The wigeon is hollowed, weighted, and glued together. I sealed the insides with WEST epoxy. I also coated the primary feathers to add some toughness. It's just about ready to seal up and paint.

The gadwall body is pretty much carved, but the head isn't too much more than cut out.

The mallard is basecoated with a little bit of detailing added to a couple areas.

 

A couple of firsts

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

Pointe Mouillee results

I had a great time at the Pointe Mouillee show. I had decoys in two contests. In the gunning birds I ended up with 3rd best of show with a hen mallard. The also had an IWCA style contest that I ended up winning 2nd and 3rd best of show. Here's a picture of me with my 2nd and 3rd BOS birds. I've posted some other birds with their ribbons in the awards section.

Getting Ready for Pointe Mouillee

The Pointe Mouillee Waterfowl Festival is coming up this weekend. They have a decoy show on Saturday that I'll be heading down for. I'm going to have to mix up the classes that I enter my decoys in this time because it looks like they don't allow my style of raised primaries in the gunning bird category.