May 23 work in progress

Today I bought an 18x36 inch canvas on which to do a painting of a Gypsy Horse to enter in Draft Horse Classic... I have 8 days to get that done. No problemo! I also thought up a great drawing to enter...ever the procrastinator. Not sure I can squeeze that in but I'll try. There is no minimum size requirement, so...3x5? Lol.

Anyhow, for the first installment of the new chicken art, I am going to show Work In Progress photos while I do the traditional drawing part. When I get to the digital component I think I'll just wait til the end and then post up the finished art. This is a real stretch for me to wrap my brain around working digitally... but the ultimate goal is not the production of an art piece, per say, it's the production of an image (which can then be used in a multitude of ways). This'll make more sense later. There will be an original drawing, but only sort of. Clear as mud?

So this being the first one and all, I just *had* to draw a Rosecomb (not that I'm biased or anything! For anyone new that's the breed I raise). The color is not going to be a Standard color, and I keep having to remind myself that this is okay, I don't *have* to draw Standard stuff anymore (yay!) I have a photo of an American Game Bantam that is one of the most stunning birds I've ever seen. Entered as a Blue Golden Duckwing but he's much too dark, so that's the color I'm going with. It's sorta somewhere between GDW and Blue Red (red shoulders, golden hackle/saddle, gorgeous!)


bird itself is about 8x8.5 inches
colored pencil, graphite, ink
on tan Stonehenge paper

detail of head: