Give a Gift
This excerpt is taken from the new WCM book Pat Godin Wildfowl Sculpture.
So much of my work has been inspired by the nature very close to my home, sometimes in my own backyard. A great example of this is my 1982 Best in World featuring a pair of black ducks (Anas rubripes) with a muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus). The local Grand River flowing into Lake Erie drains one of the largest watersheds in Ontario. I was a very young kid, about 11 years old, when I discovered the river, and for several years, I spent many hours exploring nature along its banks. Some of that time was spent fishing, some hunting, and a lot of it just wanting to be near the water. At the age of 17, I walked the shoreline in late December carrying the new Polaroid camera I had received as a Christmas gift and photographed common goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula). I also remember photographing a muskrat along the edge of the ice. I knew this environment well, so when I came up with the idea for this piece, virtually all of my required reference material was right there.
The black duck drake is supported on the right leg while the left leg and foot are lifted and in forward motion. The angle of the body and positioning of the feet enhance the feeling of rapid forward movement of the bird.
The wet fur and water dripping from the tail of the muskrat were accomplished using polyester and epoxy resins. The muskrat’s tail is the end of the descending spiral around which the design is built.
Water droplets fall from the wet fur of the muskrat into the water.
This piece was not modeled three-dimensionally. However, a few quick sketches helped to finalize the design. In this sketch, the relative positions of the ducks, muskrat, log, and large rock were determined. Pat followed them closely during the making of the piece.After placing Third in World in 1981 with my piece Wigeons and Yellow-Headed Blackbird behind winner John Scheeler with his iconic piece Goshawk and Crow and Lynn Forehand’s composition with three doves in flight, the long thought process began to come up with a piece that would capture the interest of the viewer and the judges. For the first time, the Ward Foundation designated a theme for this class, and it would be “Waterfowl” for the 1982 year. As in many areas of North America, the most common duck in Ontario is the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). A closely related species, the black duck is quite a bit rarer. It has always been a treat to see black ducks using the river habitat in the late fall and winter. In my experience, this is the classic habitat for this species.
I began thinking of a composition with black ducks as the subject and then realized that adding a muskrat would enhance the dynamics of the piece. My concept would feature interspecific aggression between the ducks and the muskrat. Basically, the design was built around a descending spiral. The viewer’s eye starts at the high point of the hen’s head and bill and is carried through the top set of primary flight feathers of the drake. The visual momentum created by the forward motion of the drake leads the viewer’s attention to the muskrat and finally its tail on the backside of the piece. To make this work, I needed to elevate one of the birds, and that turned out to be the hen perched on top of the stump. I also needed a strong feeling of rapid motion in the piece, and that was provided by the drake taking a step forward, supported and cantilevered by the toes of the back foot.
As I thought about the color scheme, I realized that the dark colors of the black duck species and muskrat would work well with some lighter elements in the rocks for contrast. I remember talking to John Scheeler a few years before as he explained a very basic concept in design. His pieces always included a balance of rough and smooth textures, light and dark values, highly patterned and monotone areas, and warm and cool hues. Instinctively, I am always aware of incorporating these elements in my designs to enhance the interest in the work. With the Black Ducks and Muskrat composition, I had great flexibility in developing an interesting color scheme for the rocks to contrast with the dark colors of the birds and mammal. Equally important in virtually all my work is the warm/cool contrast I like to develop. In this piece, for example, the orange foot of the drake steps on a rock purposely colored a cool bluish gray. This area is a focal point in the design, and establishing the warm/cool and light/dark contrasts makes it so much more interesting.
The orange-colored right foot supporting the black duck drake is purposely in contact with a complementary- colored blue rock.
I have also learned the importance of painting the feeling of light. Beyond matching the pigmentation colors of the bird’s feathers and other elements in the design, I also use warmer, lighter values of my color mixtures for highlights and cooler, darker values to paint the adjacent shadows. It is a commonly known phenomenon among painters working in two dimensions that cool colors recede and warm colors advance. This technique naturally enhances the dimensional feel of an object and unquestionably adds drama to the piece. For competitors at carving shows, painting the feeling of light has the added benefit of kicking up the aesthetics of the carving in unpredictable lighting conditions. To a certain level, the carver can control the lighting in which he/she wishes the work to be viewed by painting the feeling of light.
I have had a lot of success with the black duck. Before making this piece with the black duck as one of the primary subjects in the design, I won my second World Championship title in the Decorative Decoy Pair class (1980) with black ducks. The hen held a dragonfly nymph in her bill. Then, in 2000, I competed and won my eighth World title in the Shootin’ Rig class with a pair of black ducks and a black duck/mallard hybrid. Interestingly, in all of these World wins with the black duck species, I have included a third subject: the dragonfly nymph, the muskrat, and the black duck/mallard hybrid. At the 2023 World show, I again won the Shootin’ Rig with three black ducks.
The large rock in the composition adds tension and contrasts with the dark colors of the ducks and muskrat.
Gaining access to specimens for both the black duck and muskrat was not difficult, since they are relatively common. I gathered a great sample of rocks to use as references for the rocky shoreline I wanted to create. Gathering reference materials for my creations is the fun and interesting part of the process. There is no pressure, and new ideas often develop during the collection phase. My methods involve taking photographs; preserving vegetation in a plant press or sometimes by freezing; obtaining and preparing study skins or mounts of the bird; and collecting samples of rocks, moss, lichen, leaves, flowers, branches, logs, etc. For the birds in my de-signs, my goal is to represent them realistically, so the live bird is my primary model. I only use mounted birds and study skins for taking measurements of feather groups and as color references. Over the years, I have had a lot of fantastic opportunities to observe my subjects not only in the wild, but also in aviaries. In all cases, the generous owners of these aviary birds allowed me access into the enclosures with my camera. As I mentioned earlier, I gained great experience handling wild birds while banding waterfowl for the Canadian Wildlife Service. Over many years, I built a deep and instinctive knowledge of the birds—not only their anatomy, feather pat-terns, and colors, but also their character. So, much of the artistry in our bird sculpture is based on our interpretation of the character of our subject, and as artists, we all see these birds a little differently. This is what makes our art form so interesting.
At that point in my carving career, I had not used any traditional modeling techniques. For this piece, I certainly had a pretty clear vision of the design. I made a couple of quick sketches of the basic design and composed the main subjects. In that era of bird carving—the 70s and 80s—many of these major pieces could accurately be described as dioramas, sometimes with quite large bases to present the birds. There was a tendency to include a lot of elements in the design, often including things that were not really necessary to make the composition work and that sometimes distracted from the focus of the piece. I think I instinctively avoided the extremes of that direction in the art, but I often wonder how I would make this piece if I were creating it today. It would probably be different—not necessarily better—but distinctively different. One thing I would likely do is approach the simulation of water by carving it rather than using casting resin. I had carved the surface of water in the miniature carving Red-Breasted Mergansers at Pottahawk Point out of black walnut. The result was less literal than a realistic simulation using casting resin, but I think the end result was more sculptural. There have been some exceptional and marvelous pieces featuring “carved” water by artists such as Todd Wohlt, John Sharp, and Larry Barth. When this is done well, the artist has the ability to make the viewer believe a solid piece of wood is actually fluid water.
A lot of attention was placed on carving the muskrat’s fur to appear wet. Bits of hair were wicked together and then painted so the lighter underfur can be seen.
With three major subjects, rocks and gravel, a piece of a tree stump, and the water’s edge to create, there was a great deal of complexity in this piece. I began the actual work in early December with the objective to finish the piece one month before the show scheduled for the end of April. As it turned out, I did, indeed, meet my deadline. Certainly, a complicating factor in my life at that time was my di-agnosis of type 1 diabetes in mid-November before I began the creation of this piece. I was determined to carry on with my life and not let this chronic disease influence my goals.
The larger rocks in this piece were carved from basswood. Making rocks gives the artist lots of opportunity to make them interesting in size, shape, color, and texture. I remember finding fossils in rocks when I was quite young and being fascinated with them. I had to include some samples of sedi-mentary rocks with impressions of fossils on their surfaces in this piece. Smaller “gravelly” rocks were made from Durham’s Water Putty.
As I mentioned previously, the water in this piece, as well as in another piece I made around the same time, was simulated using polyester casting resin. I remember experimenting for quite a long time to become comfortable with the result. It was critical for me to get the formulas for the curing time and the coloring dyes to be predictable before I poured the resin into the recesses of the base. There was only about 11/2″ of depth in the base to create an illusion of much deeper water. Through testing the material, I determined a way to do this by painting the undersurface darker in the progression to the deeper water and dyeing the resin darker in the “deeper” areas. The water was actually poured in three layers; each successive layer had less dye and was therefore clearer, creating an illusion of depth.
“If a rippled or wavy surface is required to simulate movement in the water, the polyester resin can be carved after it cures and then sanded. Obviously, this leaves a roughed-up, non-shiny surface. But when the epoxy resin layer is applied over the surface, it clears up the roughness completely, leaving smooth transitions over the rippled water. If the peaks of the ripples require additional elevation, the epoxy resin can be applied over the high points.”
An issue I discovered during my testing stage was an undesired “stickiness” on the surface of the cured polyester resin. A solution to that problem was to brush a thin layer of epoxy resin over the cured polyester resin. Epoxy resin cures very hard and shiny with no “stickiness” and is highly compatible with the polyester resin. Soon, I realized another advantage of using this material as a final finish on the surface. If a rippled or wavy surface is required to simulate movement in the water, the polyester resin can be carved after it cures and then sanded. Obviously, this leaves a roughed-up, non-shiny surface. But when the epoxy resin layer is applied over the surface, it clears up the roughness completely, leaving smooth transitions over the rippled water. If the peaks of the ripples require additional elevation, the epoxy resin can be applied over the high points. Epoxy resin cures gradually, thickening as the curing progresses, unlike polyester resin, which cures quite rapidly, generating a lot of heat. So, the advantage with the epoxy resin is that as it reaches a fairly thick consistency, it can be built up on the surface without running down into the valleys. Warming the resin with a hair dryer while it is thickening, but before it cures, temporarily thins the material so that it will blend softly into the underlying surface.
I used this technique to create water droplets falling from the fur and tail of the muskrat into the water. Using real water, I observed a drop of water falling onto the water’s surface, creating a series of small waves radiating from the point of impact. In addition, there is a reverse rebound of the water droplet at the center of the rings. To replicate this, I made water droplets from the epoxy resin by picking up some of the thickening resin with a stick and letting it start to fall. I had to continually turn it up and then down again until the resin cured enough to hold its shape. On the polyester resin surface beneath the muskrat, I used a compass to inscribe concentric circles, creating a pattern from which I could build the high points of the small, radiating waves using epoxy resin. At the center, I drilled a small hole into which I vertically inserted the reverse water droplet, and I then used the epoxy resin to secure it.
At that stage in my carving career, I used basswood for all my decorative carvings, after trying white cedar and white pine for my early birds. For most of my decoy-style carvings, I needed to hollow the basswood to make them buoyant enough to float properly in competition. The two black ducks in this composition were made from hollowed bass-wood. The lightening through hollowing was particularly important for the drake, since, as mentioned, he was cantilevered off a point far away from his center of gravity. The muskrat, however, was made from tupelo wood, and I must note that it was the very first time I used that wood. Tan Brunet gave me a piece when I was at the World show in 1981, and the muskrat was created from it. Soon after, when I had reasonable access to tupelo, I made the complete transition to that wood. Much of my carving at the time of this piece was accomplished with hand tools, a drawknife, gouges, veining tools, parting tools, and various carving knives. With these tools, basswood carves exceptionally well—less so with power tools. In contrast, tupelo is more difficult to work with hand tools and easier to work with power tools. However, I remember the Cajuns talking about carving tupelo, mainly with a particular style of carving knife, immediately after the tree had been cut down, even though the wood was full of water. Tan and Jimmie Vizier would comment that the fresh wood “carved like a potato.” To prevent the wet wood from checking on the end grain, they would put a wet towel on the wood and keep it in the freezer overnight so that it would not dry too quickly. When the bird was close to the final shape, they would hollow it to remove any internal stress that might cause checking during the drying process. Of course, the wood also dries much quicker once it is hollowed.