a rooster called basil

When I moved last year, I needed to rehome my flock of chickens, which at the time amounted to about 25 birds. They now live with my friend at Starnash Farmhouse where she has the space to keep them. I visit once a week to check on them and we clean them out and do any husbandry that’s needed. We recently lost a few to the fox but thankfully none of our laying hens or young roosters.

I am very fond of chickens and have kept them for a number of years. They have the most beautiful plumage and the cockerels are tame enough to be cuddled as they were incubated rather than raised under a broody hen which means they are much more used to being handled. We try and raise our own replacement birds so we use traditional breeds, and the resultant crosses make for some interesting combinations.

This year our replacements will be sired by either of the two Speckled Sussex cockerels, or the Barnevelder. Basil the Barnevelder is absolutely gorgeous and very friendly – attributes for which the breed is well known. They have beautiful black-green-blue plumage, pencilled with brown, and I managed to snap a good photo of Basil when I was in the coop.

I wanted to paint him in gouache, and I’d just watched an Instagram reel on mixing Payne’s Grey, so thought I would look at mixing black for his plumage. I have done a few watercolour sessions with Ann Mackowski and learned a lot more about colour mixing and much as I enjoy using the flat colours for illustrations, a more painterly approach requires nuance.

I mixed two blacks, their first one using indigo, permanent green deep, and burnt umber, and the second one using Prussian blue instead of the indigo. The latter mix produced a darker black so I used that as my colour for Basil.

Here are the results:

I think it turned out quite well, and I want to try a more illustrative rendering, so flatter colours and in my usual style. We want to offer art for sale to the guests staying at Starnash as Vicky paints landscapes, so it would be great to have the opportunity to display my work.

Incidentally, I run Sketching Chickens workshops from Starnash, dates currently tbc.