It is customary for a lot of Chinese businesses to print and give away complimentary calendars to celebrate the New Year thus an example of a rooster painting would not be difficult to come by. I would say that most of these paintings would have the quintessential arrangement of a rooster with other elements of Chinese brush painting; such as wisteria, chrysanthemum, bamboo, Taihu stone, peony.
I want to present my bird in a stylized manner. I want to emphasize the pose as being intrepid, arrogant. My personal perception of a sassy bird is one with an attitude, one that struts with swag and raises its tail feathers like a proud peacock. I also want to dispense with the usual incidental elements that I mentioned earlier. I wanted my painting to tell a story, instead of a still life arrangement.
I don't want to be too far from the truth with regards to anatomical features, so I looked at a few pictures of the head, paying attention to the comb and the wattles and how they relate to the eye and the beak.
I did my practice exercise
I just realized I left out the ear and the ear lobe!
I also wanted to get the feet right, Not trusting my memories of years of munching on chicken feet, again I gathered reference material; and realized that a painting with a 5 or 3 toed rooster is an erroneous depiction.
I sketched out the pose for my bird first, and went to work. I chose a non-bleached paper with visible strands of fiber, for that informal, home made, folksy feel.
I filled in the plumage
and adorned it with my attitude piece de resistance, the rooster tail. I painted it high and proud.
I thought the lone cock is too austere for such an auspicious occasion and a companion is needed. I thought for a long time about the composition and I arrived at needing a hen that faces the other direction. I want the birds to be doing do-si-do and not promenade. I think this arrangement carries more theater.
I found this picture on the net
My wish was granted.
I used the shaft of my brush to extend a line of sight from the rooster's eye and placed the hen there. I needed to show what he was interested in. This is a key element in establishing the relationship between the main characters.
Not afraid of running the risk of being trite or pedantic, I decided to complement the rooster and the hen with a family.
After I texted this image to my confidant, I was reminded that the 2 chicks were placed too evenly and suggested I add another member to the brood.
I am thankful for that advice.
I like the emotion and the energy this painting portrays. I can sense the movement and interaction in this family. The parents' focus was in each other, and the chicks begged only from the mother. Of course I am biased.
What I don't like is the rooster looked a little slim to me. I would love to have painted a fuller lower body. I think I painted his foot wrong. Had I painted his toes facing the viewer, it would have suggested a body turning towards the viewer, thus presenting a narrower girth.
The angle of the leg stance did not seem right either. It was too straight. I was so carried away by the thought of standing pound and tall that I ignored the natural stance. Had I superimposed the leg skeletal structure onto my rooster to begin with, in my mind at least, I would have avoided this mistake.
The above illustration shows the relative angles of the femur, tibia and the tarsometatarsals of the rooster's leg. It is obvious that the leg does not go vertically up and down. Just to prove my point I digitally moved the leg to the new position. I think it looks much better this way. What a difference 9 degrees off center makes!
Again, Happy New Year!
