Blue Jayfowl

Digital, Painter 11

I really wanted to paint chickens with markings from other birds. Tiny goldfinch chickens! Cardinal chickens! The noble Bald Chicken, symbol of our nation, coming in for a landing at the nest!

Bluejays are the most distinctively colored birds I could think of, so I started there. And I think the color bit works, but I kinda shot myself in the foot with the pose on the rooster.

See, I wanted to make a rooster that looked a bit like it was scolding, sort of like a bluejay, so I went for crowing and yelling roosters. And that…well…roosters are noble, lovely birds when they pose, when they strut, even when they sit.

They are damned ugly when they stick their necks out and crow. They develop all these lumps and bumps and weird protrusions. The smooth line of the neck and back turns into a strange set of not-at-all-intuitive curves. And I tried to capture all that faithfully…which left me with a weirdly lumpy chicken. Which I attempted to smooth out a bit, but…well…there you are. The end result is not graceful.

Sometimes reality sits oddly on the eye.

Anyway! Prints available, as always, and despite my dissatisfaction, I’m glad to get the idea off my chest.

 

3 thoughts on “Blue Jayfowl

  1. Uzuri says:

    Having once had a rooster… trust me, the awkwardness is MUCH more real than the nobility.

    He was such a dip. He was afraid of everything, bitched about everything, ate everything (you know those turkeys from your previous journal? He was headed that direction). Oh, and he was a fashion critic. Hated my work boots, wanted to kill them. Any other shoe, not a problem, but he had some sort of boot vendetta.

    I gave him away. Can’t have a chicken insulting my footwear.

  2. Victoria says:

    Yeah, but the fact that my eye said, “yep, crowing rooster ” before the blue jay aspect even registered makes it more real in my imagination. The only thing that could top this is if one of them was preening itself. After all chickens are common. While they may appear noble and lovely in certain poses, they’re not noble creatures. Not at all. Vicious, petty and annoying all come to mind before noble and lovely.

  3. raven_feathers says:

    and as someone with more roosters than common sense, i think you might’ve smoothed it out TOO much. it looks vaguely less roostery to me than it should.

    it might be fun (in possibly only a really chicken-geeky kinda way) to bring in elements of different chicken breeds to complement the songbird species if you keep doing these. i’m seeing a silkie-chickadee morph over here that would tickle greatly.

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