We recently got rid of 5 chickens, bringing our flock down to, let’s just say, around 23 chickens. When you own chickens, you inherit something called chicken math, where you never really know how many chickens you have.

This week, as I said in my post last week, I set out to add more depth to my paintings, especially when I paint chickens. I would say it was a success. We are teaching Quinn right now that practice makes BETTER, not perfect, because we will never be perfect, but we can be better. I’m feeling that way this week. My chickens aren’t perfect, yet they are better, and I felt way more comfortable painting them this week and trying different techniques.

The one thing I found that was hard was the feathers on a chicken. But I think when I paint more loosely, the chicken has better depth. I also think that leaving white space instead of just painting my drawing all the way and adding detail as I go helps. The white becomes the detail. As I continue painting, I can’t wait to see what happens when I paint the different animals I like.

I took the chicken I did last week with the umbrella and added more depth to it. So I have a before-and-after here.

The chicken is definitely darker, and I honestly think adding darker tones automatically helps with depth. It also makes the painting richer. But I’m going to be honest, adding darker tones is SO scary for me. I’m afraid to mess up the painting because a dark watercolor is hard to water down after it’s placed.

I love these chickens. This is the style that I want to really get down in my painting techniques. I love how these chickens look with their wings. So really, I just need to learn how to add depth when I give the chickens a human action. For example, the wing sticking out to hold an umbrella or a balloon. I also love the shadow situation in the painting above because, in itself, it adds a bit of depth.

Here’s a little before-and-after of the setup and my light drawing beforehand. You can see a framed chicken that has amazing depth. I painted that over a year ago, and I love it. Such good depth and movement in the painting. I used it for inspiration. Nothing like being inspired by your own work. HA! You can also see that I didn’t plan to add a market, but by the time I finished painting the chicken, I felt the painting was incomplete. I was actually inspired by and thought of the book To Market, To Market, which goes “To market, to market, to buy a red hen, home again…” I like how this chicken has depth and texture. I am really trying to keep more white contrast in my watercolors, based on what I learned while painting the three chickens above, and I may need to add more once the painting is complete. So, although this chicken has more depth, I think keeping the white contrast will help in the future.

This chicken was the first one I painted this week, and although it has some depth, it has no comparison to the chickens above. So even in a week from beginning to end, I learned a little bit more about how to give a painting depth, specifically a chicken. I don’t know why it’s hard for me to figure out the depth of chickens, but it’s proving difficult. I’m glad my week ended with some great paintings of chickens.