A Series of Chickens

OK, here is one little plan... there is an Arts and Crafts fair coming up at the end of November at my church, for which I've been asked to put up some artwork. I thought I would try and do some 'painting-a-day' paintings (or as close to that as I can get), in small series of four or six to each theme. I doubt if anyone will come to a church A&C Fair and buy a great big painting, so these are little oils on 8"x10" stretched canvases - so they don't need to be framed - the trouble with watercolours.
Starting with Chickens- they bring back happy childhood memories of them scratching around under our big mulberry tree in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, as it was then - Zimbabwe of course now (you never saw such enormous, shiny black mulberries as grew from the richly manured soil of the chicken-coop)... dodging the foul(sorry)-tempered cock to discover the delight of an occasional egg... coming home from trips away to be greeted at the gate by two dogs, two cats and two chickens.... and the trauma (not-happy memory) suffered by my sister Vivienne when her best beloved Little White Hen was presented as dinner one night...It's strange going back to oils after such a long - for me - immersion in watercolours (which I have not abandoned, the oils are for practical reasons). I wasn't quite sure how to begin. I prepared the canvases with a red ground, then sketched in the light value chicken shapes, and then the dark shadows and values - rather backwards foremost I think.

I finished one - once I got going I couldn't stop - though when I see it on screen, I see all the faults I couldn't before, so it needs some more tweaking. I managed to lose most of the red ground, which I rather wanted to show a bit more. That must be one of the values of doing a series - hopefully they get better, or closer to your intentions, as you go along. I think if I can progress with these small themes, I might be psyching myself up for a bigger series later on, that will develop my self-discipline and purpose!