chicken

oil on gatorboard, 8×10 inches

My good friends Jeff & Kathleen Sieck live up in Santa Ynez, which is basically the cowboy version of Santa Barbara. In keeping with the unspoken moral code of their rural surroundings, they’ve got their own chicken coop, and one day Jeff sent me a great photo of one of their chickens on the move, on the off chance that I’d want to paint from it. And I did just that one afternoon, producing the above quick sketch painting. I had a lot of fun painting this, and apparently my enthusiasm came through in the finished piece, as a friend promptly bought the original the very next day.

It’s worth noting that I think the only good chicken is a dead, grilled one—I think the actual living birds are kind of disgusting in real life, and just like Napoleon Dynamite, I’m a little freaked out by the talons. You’ll never catch me actually touching one. But for some reason, I’m fascinated with them as painting subjects.

With how busy my schedule tends to be, I really treasure the days where I get to do a “done in one” painting—it keeps my brushwork looser, and it just feels incredibly satisfying to finish a painting in a single sitting. My illustration work tends to be fairly labor intensive, so for me, good quick sketch painting sessions are an essential part of keeping the fires going.