🦆Summer Ducks and a Swan🦢

July 5, 2025

These started as an excuse to use the leftover paint from another painting my friend GweanerLIVE (check him out on YouTube!) and I did together because man, I HATE wasting materials. We had so much leftover blue, yellow, and green paint that I had to use some of it.

These started as me grabbing a wooden panel that I wanted to repaint. Originally, it was orange and had the Japanese symbol for fire in red. I made that as a middle schooler, and since that wasn't something I was too fond of having up anymore, I wanted to repaint it. So I took the opportunity to take the available colours and make something new with the limited colour palette before me.

I think limiting your options is a powerful catalyst to creativity. It's a seemingly paradoxical statement, but when you have less space to work with, it forces you to think of new ways to use what you do have.

So with the colours I did have, what was the first thing that came to mind?

A little duck~

© Abbie Dreamer. You may not save, redistribute, or repost my artwork in any way.

Here’s the first attempt! I just kept slapping on colours into the wood panel and layering them on because I’m too impatient to let anything dry. It ended up looking really fun though!

The bright blue eye does haunt me a bit though...

I think the wood ended up absorbing a lot of the paint, so it didn't blend as nicely as it could've, but even so! I still had a good amount of paint leftover. So of course I did a second take of the duck!

© Abbie Dreamer. You may not save, redistribute, or repost my artwork in any way.

This one was on an old button I thrifted~ I think it turned out much better as I wasn’t afraid to mix things together and have bolder values, like the pure white for the highlights! Additionally, since the space was smaller, I had to paint the duck more compact. I think that helped the little guy come out cuter though! Should I ever buy some resin, I would love to seal this art piece and place him on my bag to take on adventues!

I like that this little duck has more of a Monet, impressionistic vibe. I wasn't going for accuracy, but for the beauty and feel of tranquility with a duckling in nature! There's such a peace of being out on a lake in a meadow, where trees surround the scene and allow for gentle dappled sunlight to make its way through and gently illuminate the water's surface. It's been a while since I had the opportunity to live in such a scene, but those memories hold strong in my mind.

Since I had lots of white left still, even after this second painting… I grabbed a mini canvas I had put aside for an idea I probably am not going to get to anytime soon and went ahead with a third painting~

Swans are so elegant and beautiful~ They are present in many of my memories of living in England. Where I lived, there were tons of swans in every lake that surrounded my house. As well as geese, but I LOVED seeing the swans in their beauty~

They were also present in the many castles I saw in England. At Leeds Castle, one of the final ones I visited, there was even a black swan among the flock! It was absolutely gorgeous!

So to pay homage to these magestic birds, the final painting HAD to be a swan~ Framed by trees and gentle yellow petals, this swan enjoys the dappled sunlight through the trees over the lake.

Which painting encapsulates a gentle summer day at the lake the best~? Hehe, would you want to see more ducks or swans out on the lake~?