Process

How hard can it be to paint a chicken?

In the beginning, I paddled across muddy fields and took about 400 photographs.

At first the chickens rushed up to me to be fed.

Then, when they realised that I hadn't any food, 

they turned their backs to me and pecked the ground with their bums in the air.

Having visited several locations I had run out of time and had to go with the best of a bad bunch.

I liked the chicken coop but couldn't get a decent photo of a chicken on the ramp.

So I used the graphics editor on my computer to combine the two photographs.

I printed this image on to copy paper and traced it on to my gessoed MDF board.

The tonal values of the image were mapped out in monotone.
Ultramarine for the chickenand Burnt Sienna for the coop (these being opposite, on a colour wheel, to the true colours).

Then the colour layers were added until I was happy with the result.











Think I should have started with the egg.