Best of the Barnyard 2

Artist's Gallery

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