Made this watercolor painting based off my little chicken warriors, original is already sold, but I will be making a limited run of prints, stickers, and potentially buttons... Maybe a handful of mugs xD I know I want a mug of it >:O
If you are in the US and own poultry or other outdoor birds, please, please be careful - even if you are in an area where bird flu is yet to be reported. Don’t bring home new birds, bring birds inside if possible or restrict their potential access to wild birds, seek out a test (they are often free and do not require euthanasia) if your bird is showing symptoms.
It's that time of year again! BAWKtober 2023 is here with this year's prompt list. Thank you all for your suggestions.
Through the month of October, I will be doing daily doodles of poultry themed shenanigans. If anyone would like to join in on the BAWKtober art challenge this year, whether for one day or for all of them, please do! You can be as creative as you want with the prompts. Just have fun and tag me so I can see and reblog what you've come up with >:D
This is a useful little sequence of exercises for learning the shapes of an animal (e.g., a chook) and then loosening your sketches — it’s fun on its own, but I also do this when about to illustrate an animal I don’t draw a lot.
Take your [chook] and break it into the basic shapes from which it is constructed. Try very simple (e.g. the two-eggs approach at the top of the page) and more nuanced. Try considering just types of line-segments that outline it (straight lines? s-curves?)
Take a few examples of [chooks] and work out what the basic overall shape of each is — in this case, a sort of fox/shield. Is there a shape all the [chooks] you’ve looked at have in common? What are the fewest number of sides that recognisably contain a [chook]? If your subject has lines (e.g. legs) and you extend them, do they always pass through the same place? (And if you can, find a video and sketch them in motion, to see the line they follow when they move.)
Choose any basic shape (e.g. circle, square, triangle) and use it to design a [chook]. Fit a [chook] into it entirely. Then use it as the general base for a [chook].
Draw a sequence of irregular, scribbly shapes. Turn each into a [chook]. Lean into the recognisable bits, the bits where the shape suggests a [chook]. Then lean the other way, and force the shape to be a [chook] against its instincts.
Make some ink/paint/coffee blots. What are the minimum details you can add to turn each into a [chook]?
(There are a few links to related and writing versions of this exercise at Observation journal exercise: simplifying sketches, mixing them up again)
"Hock burn" is caused by ammonia from excrement. A sign of poorer welfare on farms, it can be seen on a third of birds in some supermarkets, data shows.
The BBC asked the 10 biggest UK chains about its presence on their shelves. Co-op and Aldi reported the highest rates but five (Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Iceland and Ocado) refused to release data.
Hock burn is often associated with a high-stocking density of birds and is a result of prolonged contact to moist, dirty litter. It shows up on packaged and prepared meat as brown ulcers on the back of the leg.
Chicken with hock burn markings is still safe to eat. But the amount of hock burn within a poultry flock is an industry-accepted indicator of wider welfare standards on farms.
Red Tractor, the UK's biggest farm and food assurance scheme, sets a target rate for hock burn of no more than 15% of a flock.