Duck Stamp Continued

As you can see, I've begun painting the water, first establishing some shadows and adding some preliminary highlights. It needs some work, but I like how it's coming along. The bill shape is also corrected. This evening I added the shadow to the head and the left flank--wow! it's amazing how just one little step can improve a painting like this. The key for these is to get the color of the shadow right, making sure it still looks like white. Cool shadows against such a warm background look really great.