My picture of a duck

I made this picture of a duck for a contest. It was very very fun, although getting the outline of the duck was a lot of work. Once I got to put the colors in it was getting funner and funner and funner. After I got the duck all drew in I drew water around it and the trees, little island. That's what I did.

This is a mallard boy duck.

Addy entered the Junior Duck Stamp contest, which we heard about when checking into good places for nature walks in our new area. It is put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Children learn about conservation, then create a portrait of a North American duck, goose or swan. We use the Usbourne "First Book of Nature" as part of our science learning and happened to be reading from the section about birds anyway, so it was a nice tie-in.

Earlier this winter we had twice tried to see the wildlife artist Michael Glenn Monroe at a book signing in Big Rapids, but his visits were postponed both times (once he was commissioned to create ornaments for the White House and went to meet President and Laura Bush as if that is somehow more important than going to Big Rapids, and the second time a snowstorm kept him away). Addy had been looking forward to it, so we found a signed copy of his "The Wonders of Nature Sketchbook: Learn About Nature and How to Draw It" at a local bookstore. In the book he demonstrates how to put together simple shapes to create animals, including a duck. She practiced his method to make her duck, then used bird books to figure out how to color the mallard.

Addy titled her work "Nature Picture of Boy Mallard." Students are encouraged to write a conservation message to submit along with their picture. She wrote, "Take care of the earth, and take care of the things in it and around it."