Chicken, Anyone?

 I was at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum the other day and couldn't pass up sketching the chickens in the back by the barn.

Inktober Day 20

 I don't think I've been to the Suffolk County Farm in Yaphank since the start of the pandemic. I missed seeing and sketching the animals. So I headed there for my Inktober Day 20 sketch of the chickens and roosters.

Inktober Day 9 - Chickens

 Sketching at the Suffolk County Farm is always fun. The chickens are always an active group but they were fun for my Inktober Day 9 sketch. They never stay still enough to get them in one shot, but they usually return to the same position so I moved back and forth from one chicken to another. I used a combination of different pens and inks for this. 

 

Chickens

When I was at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Oakdale I stopped to see the chickens. They are all of the same breed and have great colored feathers. While I was sitting there sketching I found out a few interesting things. Chickens love watermelon and cucumbers. Their caretakers brought out bags of them and the chickens were so excited and ate every morsel. Apparently they love the water in both. These were painted directly in watercolors.

At the Farm

I visited the Suffolk County Farm in Yaphank the other day and decided to focus on the birds. The turkey was strutting his stuff and didn't stay still for long. I sketched him directly in watercolor.

The chickens are usually always in the same place but they weren't there. I asked one of the workers and she told me they moved them to a different enclosure. There used to be a real scrawny one that looked like he had been in a fight with some animal and lost, but I didn't see him when I was there. I hope something didn't happen to him. I worked on all three of these at the same time...waiting for each of them to come back to the same or similar pose.

Birds of a Feather

We had another beautiful, warm day today. I think the temperature reached the high 60s. I know we were sitting out sketching without our coats. Yay!!! My friend, Suzala has been sketching the birds that are kept behind the Milleridge Inn in Jericho. We saw them when we were sketching the small out buildings last month and the peacocks came around the car. There are chickens, roosters, peacocks and peahens, and turkeys. They have structures for shelter but are pretty much free to roam around the property. There is a pig and a donkey but they are kept in their enclosure. Another friend took the train from Brooklyn and Suzala picked her up at the train station.

The birds are friendly but still wander off before you can sketch them fully. I started several of them and just waited until they returned. I did a sheet with a lot of them.

The turkey liked walking around with his feathers on display.

The peacocks were really so colorful.

I also tried out a magic pencil, those pencils that have all the colors swirling around the tips. 

Here are a few photos from our day.

Laura, Suzala and friends.

Turkeys 

This was a tiny puffball of a chicken.

Inktober 2018 - Day 19

It was windy and a bit cold at the Suffolk County Farm. I went there to do some bird sketches for my Day 19 for Inktober 2018. I did a few chickens and then went over by the turkeys. The guy on the bottom right looked like he had tangled with some creature. He was nearly bald in spots and missing so many feathers. I wonder what his story was.

#inktober #inktober2018