Mandarin Duck

This picture was meant to be a birthday present for ~Wuxiong . His birthday's tomorrow so... Happy Birthday Daniel! XD The Chinese words over there is 鸳鸯 (pronounced yuān yāng) which is the Mandarin Duck of course.

I chose to draw the drake because it was gorgeous. The drawing and the reference picture had their wings flapped out & I love drawing wings. I actually wanted to compose my own pose but I had problems on how would the sail feathers look like when it extended its wings...

Well, it all started when Dan mentioned that he likes ducks (but not to the point of =Chocoreaper 's exaggeration...) and that he drew a picture of it for his illustration class. But his lecturer said it was too simple so that gave me this idea.

Minutes of drawing with 4H pencil
A couple of hours with Swans Premium colour pencil
Drawing from a reference picture