Portrait of "Pepper"

The only successful portrait sketch today...
This is our Easter Egger,  "Pepper."

Chicken Scratch Portraits!

Portraits are difficult, especially when you're drawing children or animals. The fear of not getting a likeness can make even the best artists, "chicken."

Yet, I figure there's no reason to be chicken of doing a portrait of a chicken-- after all, it takes one to know one, and so a chicken oughta know best how to draw a chicken!

Here are portraits of two of our "ladies" -- Ivy the Blue Ameraucana, and Esmeralda ("Ezzy" for short) a Black Silkie on loan to us from friends of ours (we're letting Oreo and Ezzy become parents).

Back in the Saddle Again

It's been a busy month, and I've not been drawing the chickens much lately.

But today I got to draw just a bit, and was able to dash off a few scratches:

Duck Pond Squatters!

Lately I've been digging a small pond for my ducks, and a couple weeks ago it rained enough to fill the thing up... and recently I've noticed a lot of little squiggly critters swimming about in the water (I suspect it's a by-product of the crazy croaking parties we've heard out there at night). Tadpoles!

They are cute little things, and already we are seeing some of them with legs.

This is great, since I'm currently working on an art project involving tadpoles and frogs. So these little guys will be the models for my reference material! Serendipity. Providence!

Today's Scratch Doodles

Not much today-- just a few doodles while the chickens were ranging around (today they were especially troublesome models!):

The good thing about it was that I had to totally simplify the drawings, seeing them in their totally basic expressions. So even though the sketches are very simple, they have a certain expressive life to them: