Silky & Fuzzy 2

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Finished Ducks

Now the ducks are taking shape! I added highlights on their necks and backs, stark white and dark feathers on the wings, and defining black on the bills. I love how the stones came out too--the front one looks very textured, while the background rocks are smooth and shaded. You may be surprised to find out that this was only an 8" by 11 1/2" picture, since I crammed so much detail into it. I guess that's why I am overwhelmed with larger paintings: I work in such painstaking detail!

If these are the two Khaki Campbells from my painting "Baby Ducks," where is the Pekin? You can see my painting of our Pekin duck, Daffy, right here. It's less detailed, only the size of a greeting card; check it out and tell me which one you like better.

Silky & Fuzzy 1

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First Layer

Of course, before you know it, those little ducklings will be all grown up into big ducks! So here goes for a painting of Silky and Fuzzy, the grown ducklings from the "Baby Ducks" painting. I placed them standing on our (somewhat fragmented) cement sidewalk. I started out with blocking in the stone and duck colors, adding shading around the ducks' necks and feet. The shape came out pretty well, it seemed to come naturally to me. I also tried to keep more unity in the grass as I painted it, creating clumps of dark and light rather than individual brush strokes. I'd say it's coming along pretty well!

Baby Ducks

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Snuggly Duckies

 Which are cuter: chicks or ducklings? In our house that would be a debated question. But when my sister got three little ducklings, there was no question they were cute! Of course, after I got done with my chicks, she wanted a painting of her "babies" too. She certainly didn't lack photographs of them for me to use as references. I did this painting in almost one sitting, I think. I used what I'd learned on the chicks and kept the litter color smooth and uniform. The duckling "fur" was hard to mimic, but they look pretty soft. The yellow one's name is Daffodil; it's a Pekin that grows to nine pounds (imagine that!). And the little brown one (no, it's not a platypus) is either Fuzzy or Silky--we had two identical brown duckies. They are Khaki Campbells, champion egg layers in the duck world, and about half as small as the Pekins.

April Arrival

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Cozy Chicks Framed

A year later, I wrote a poem about the arrival of our first chicks. I think it goes with this picture pretty well. Hopefully, even those who don't love chickens will enjoy it!

 

A box full of wonder,

So lively yet tender,

Was delivered that drear April day—

The sprout of the seed for

The amazing adventure

That would grow in a promising way.

 

I peeked in the package—

There were ten cheeping chicks!

In the water I dipped all their beaks,

And settled them down in

The box like a bird’s nest,

Which would be their first home for six weeks.

 

They explored, scratched, and twittered,

Pecked food in the feeder,

And then slept kitten-style on the floor.

Soon rich, rusty copper

And midnight black feathers

Replaced cottony down of before.

 

With wonder we watched as

These beautiful “peepies”

Became hens of a fine, fruitful flock,

Changing so many ways—

From a box to a henhouse,

From wee “cheeps” to the egg-laying “bock”!

Cozy Chicks 3

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Finished Painting

If you have been following my posts, you know that this painting needed some work. The value contrasts were all the same, shown by looking at the picture here in grayscale. So I had to decide whether to make the chicks, or the background, darker. Since your eye usually goes for the darkest object first, I decided to darken the chicks' feathers. Now this doesn't mean they can't still have highlights; I only need a contrast between various values. I also tried to unify the straw colors more since they were really distracting.

In the end, I think the chicks came out very life-like. I especially like how I captured the one in the back sleeping--that's exactly how a chick sleeps, head dropping down til it hits something! Theoretically, two of these chicks are Buckeye and Midnight, the now "famous" hens in my painting "Best of the Barnyard." But of course, there is actually no way to know what exactly they looked like as babies.

Cozy Chicks 2

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Adding Detail

Another layer of paint brings everything into a bit more detail. The box of gravel grit in the background is looking best! We made the little roost ourselves, and I enjoyed painting it. Of course, it would not actually look that clean. As for the chicks, painting chick down feathers is even harder than regular chicken feathers!

Chicks in Gray-Scale

Doing this painting at my art group really helped. The senior art teacher pointed out that everything in the painting, though different colors, was all the same value. I took a black-and-white photo to find out, and indeed, almost everything was the same shade of gray. Gray-scale removes the color and shows clearly the level of dark vs light in the painting. Looks like I will need to add some real dark and light colors into the painting next!

Cozy Chicks 1

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Beginning Layers

My apologies if you are tired of chickens already; I still have more than a few paintings to share! Of course, since chicks are one of the cutest things on earth, I had to do a chick painting next. Only, in my painting, they don't look like the cutest things on earth . . . humm. Anyway, I started with a dozen photos of my first chicks (see a few here), and put in a wash of colors. The "chipmunk" stripes on the Rhode Island Reds' backs were very important, as well as a few white feathers already coming out on the Barred Rock chick's wing. Can you make out the roost it's supposed to be perched on?

Best of the Barnyard 3

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Proud to Be a Hen

And . . . what do you think of the finished picture? Just a few more highlights on everything finalized the scene nicely. It's a very intense, color-rich picture, to say the least. I learned a couple important lessons on this one. First, darks and lights make all the difference. Always keep them balanced in your painting. Second, keep background objects loose and light. The grass and logs verge on the edge of being more detailed than the hens, and thus distracting from the focal point. Third, chickens are very delicate creatures which require feathery strokes and moderate amounts of paint. This said, I'm still surprised the picture came out as well as it did! And afterward, my art teacher said, again, that I really should become a children's book illustrator!

Best of the Barnyard 2

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Adding Definition

So . . . after another layer of paint, everything is a bit more defined. You can find almost every color of paint on the straw-covered ground, and that corn cob must be some type of monster hybrid! Okay, what I do like about the painting at this point is those logs in the back and the paint texture on the side of the building. The shading and color creates some really nice texture there. By the way, the peeling paint was not natural; my chickens have been pecking away at it for the last three years. I never knew chickens think paint is candy!

 

As for the work on the hens themselves, above you can see that I made that dark hen even darker, now varying from coal black to ebony! This is definitely not the coloring of a Rhode Island Red. So below, in stage three, I tried to add some lighter browns back in. Not there yet, but certainly an improvement. That's the benefit of acrylics: you can always paint it out. The combs proved especially hard, and they came out dark too. And the Barred Rock was worse than painting a zebra; trying to work shading into the white stripes as I moved around its body was not short of tedious! But I'm really pleased with it: the blurrier stripes on the leg feathers and tail make those fluffier feathers look soft. There sure is an art to painting feathers!

Feathers Coming Along

Best of the Barnyard 1

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Underpainting

If I asked you to guess one subject I would choose to paint, that I've not touched yet, what would it be? If you guessed chickens, you're right! Chicken Lover + Artist = Poultry Painter. Or, in the words of one of my friends at my art class, I am the "Rembrandt of the Barnyard"! Well, as it turned out, spending hours observing my hens did not seem to improve my poultry painting abilities much.

When I finally decided to tackle chickens, I decided to do my two favorite hens from my first flock: Buckeye and Midnight. I proceeded to follow them around with a camera taking fifty pictures each, and a few of every other hen in my flock "for reference" on the tough spots. Okay, it is kind of hard to get a chicken to pose in that perfect position you want! You can see actual photos of both of them here and here. Above is a watery painted sketch of the scene I wanted. Notice on the brown hen how my shading is already off: the shadows on the wing are much darker than the leg . . . we'll have to see about that one.

Easter Eggs

Holidays

One Egg, Two Eggs, Red Egg, Blue Eggs

Here is another picture of our beautiful colored Easter eggs. There are all colors of the rainbow! My sister did a very nice job dying her duck eggs (these were the only white eggs we had). You can read all about her no-fuss method in my last post!