This painting is a portrait of myself and my fish, Mozart, who passed away two years ago. I titled this piece Lacrimosa which means “tearful” in Latin. Lacrimosa is part of Requiem Mass, the last piece by the composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote it before dying in 1791. The song reveals the mankind’s deepest emotions and fear of death. In this painting, I imagined him swimming along to the song.

I originally chose several photos of different ducks including the wood duck and mandarin. The canvasback seemed the most beautiful to me. The whole painting started off with a dusky medium tone blue to set the scene, with accents of darker blues to add depth to the background. As depth was being added, white for the snow and ice was added in. I tried to keep the background detailed without being too eye catching. For the watery sand the duck stands on, it was a struggle to get just the right blue! After a while of mixing various amounts of blue with grey and orange, I added green to see what would happen. Just a touch of it was enough. Still took several times to get the right look, however. The back of the duck, where the black meets the white was my favorite part of the painting. The brush gave just the right texture to allow the two shades to meet without being too perfect. In most paintings, it’s important to make the head of your subject your main attraction. While the whole bird is beautiful, it’s head needed the extra umph. The reference I used was perfect because of the blues surrounding the deep, contrasting orange; the slopes in the snow lead you right to it.

I wanted to push myself with value in painting and this subject was the perfect choice with the use of a light source that is from the bottom illuminating only a part of the face and boat. This adds to the mystery. I also painted this as a gift to one of my teachers.