Illustration: Watercolor Chicken Tutorial

Fun fact, chickens are one of my favorite animals. They're so cute! They're mini-dinosaurs! We can eat their eggs! They're 95% of the reason I keep vegetarian!

Related fact, I have this one internet friend who has pet chickens, and while all chickens are pretty good, hers are the BEST. My favorite is a big yellow hen she has named Buffy (like the vampire slayer).

It's this chicken friend's birthday this week, so I thought I'd mail her a hand-made card featuring Buffy. And! I thought I'd do a watercolor tutorial on how to draw your own simple little chickens for all your chicken needs. It'll look somethin' like this:

Let's get to it!

First, the colors. You'll probably need 2-3 shades of yellowish-brown and 1-2 shades of red.

For the body, I used Deep Naples Yellow for the base and Gamboge and Yellow Ochre for shading, and (not shown here) some Burnt Sienna too. For the comb and wattle, I used Permanent Rose and Alizarin Crimson.

Take a big ol' brush (I used a #12) and mix a lot of water with a little bit of paint, and make a vaguely chicken-like shape to start. Chickens come in a bunch of different shapes and sizes, but my friend's chicken is the classic, generic, Platonic ideal of a chicken. Kinda like ... a dumpling or a pierogi, I guess. So I'm going with that.

Mix your darker hues and add some shading. I used a smaller brush (#6) for this. Again, don't get too heavy-handed with the paint here — you want the cool splotchy look because it adds texture and hints at shape (which is important since we're not going to get super detailed with the feathers).

Resist also the urge to add too much shading. You want some areas where the original light base color still shows through. Contrast is important, if the whole thing is all one medium shade, it will look flat and boring.

Scribble in a little red there for the comb and wattle. Wait for the entire body to dry before doing this part, or else the colors will run together and the red will get places you don't want it to be.

Then add an eye and some dinky little feet, and you're done!!

As you can tell from the header image, I got a bit overzealous in practicing and generated a bunch of chickens. I've got a small army now, but I showed some of my other friends and now they all want chickens too! Looks like my master plan to conquer the world with poultry is succeeding ... 🐔

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this or find it helpful!