Yupo Rooster and a Poem

Rooster, watercolor on Yupo

About once a month or so I join a local painting group in a studio in an old warehouse by the railroad tracks.  It's a congenial and committed group who enjoys a weekly dose of watercolors, and also loves to chat and snack on cookies or cheese and crackers.  Last week they were experimenting with Yupo, a synthetic paper.  I did those tight child portraits based on vintage photos first, but this time I was much looser.  I borrowed a source photo and did a basic painting of this bird.  The original chicken is standing on a wooden deck with shrubs in the background, but I wanted to just play with something less literal.  When I got home I added the background, and created texture by tilting my board to create runs, and salt for a speckled effect.  Later still I used watercolor pencils for some line work details on the legs and in the plumage.

By the way, you would do our local art league a favor by clicking on the link "Janesville Art League" on the left sidebar.  They will continue to get a free listing if people visit the site.

Chaucer

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An old man in a lodge within a park;

  The chamber walls depicted all around

     With portraitures of huntsmen, hawk, and hound,

     And the hurt deer.  He listeneth  to the lark,

Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark

     Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;

     He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,

     Then writeth in a book like any clerk.

He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote

     The Canterbury Tales, and his old age

     Made beautiful with song; and as I read

I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note

     Of lark and linnet, and from every page

     Rise odors of ploughed field and flowery mead.