YouTube video – the white chicken in watercolour

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With this tutorial, I tried to incorporate a little bit of my thinking behind the painting, before I even start to put pencil to paper, hence my inclusion of the 3 thumbnails.

As discussed, after checking all 3 thumbnails, I decided on the first one, with the chicken looking right, it made sense to put her at the left of the picture, giving her ‘breathing room’.

The final portrait was completed on Baohong 300gsm, cold-pressed. The paint behaves itself on this paper.

Once I had completed the background and it had dried, I started work on the chicken, doing the light feather first. It was painted in the lightest of values, using very thin paint, which can be layered and painted over. You will see in the finished version (below), that I have worked on these feathers a bit more, but I haven’t overdone it. The colours for the feathers are neutrals, making the red of the comb stand out. This neutral was created by mixing a few colours together on my palette, usually one of each primary colour.

In the final version, I added more grass and worked on the comb a little more. I think it’s finished now.