Painting Goldeneyes

Well, painting drakes anyway. I've been pretty busy with work so haven't been able to get as much done on my decoys as I was hoping. But I'm making progress. After working up a paint scheme for the drakes a few weeks ago (with some help from Randy) I found that oil (and alkyd) paints don't keep well - even in covered containers. I've only been able to get around to painting on the rest of them a little here and there. So here it is probably about a month later, and I'm just finishing them up. Most of them anyway. Somehow I didn't get one sealed when the others were, so it's significantly behind the curve. The most annoying part of the process is how many coats of white I need to cover well. I think I'll try basing in gesso next time to see if that helps.



I had most everything base coated and the whites done prior to the weekend. I had some work to do so I opted to stick around home, planning on getting some painting in too. I was able to finish up the rump, back, and the stripes/side pocket lines on all (but the one). I also got one head painted only to find that I had forgot to put a darker base on and the green we mixed up was drying up (odd since it was all oil, no alkyd or ronan colors mixed in). So it didn't cover well and looked terrible. I got out my test board and put a very dark grey base on and then tried the green again. I'm still not sure that it's going to be quite the same as the original, but it's very close at least. So, last night I had some time to get some paint on the heads of the rest of them. There's just a couple small things left - paint the bills, tail feathers on a couple, scrape off the eyes - and then I'll finish keeling and weighting them. But, at least they're looking like Goldeneye now. Next up... sealing and painting the hens. At least there's only 4 of them!