With this painting, I was selected as the 2004 Ohio Ducks Unlimited Artist of the year. It features a drake canvasback duck approaching, with wings cupped and feet dropped. The thought of this makes any duck hunter’s heart pound with excitement …mine included. This is the reason I wanted to make it the focus of my painting. Also, I love the shallow marshy bays that canvasbacks inhabit. I thought that the blue green color of the water would work well with the orange of the cattails and the color of the bird’s head. Any artist can tell you, water is one of the toughest things to paint convincingly. I worked for a very long time trying to get this water to look the way I wanted. As an artist, you have to always keep striving to learn new things and I am constantly learning. I have to constantly remind myself to focus on what something actually looks like instead of what I think something is supposed to look like.