Rooster Rally

SCC Demo Rooster is Complete!

Here is the piece I was working on at the SCC demo. I wanted to post it in case any of the students were interested in the final piece since they got to see me start it last week. This is one of many roosters I am creating for the Katharine Butler Gallery in Sarasota.

I talked about transitioning the painted bottom half to the papered top half with the students and you can see that I used lots of small pieces of the brown paper with gold squares on it to make this transition. I carried that through the middle of the rooster with lots of small pieces of torn book pages that create the spotty feather effect. I like the way there is now a speckled strip across the middle of the piece. The yellow/brown color represents grass.

The top area was tricky because it is supposed to be like blue sky dappled through the trees. It can't be clear and in focus or it would compete with our feathered friend, however it's hard to get a feeling of blurred focus with torn paper! I tried to keep that area from competing with the rooster by not bringing it all the way down to meet his top edge.

So there you have it! While poking around online trying to find witty names for my rooster series, I learned a few things. Did you know that a castrated rooster is called a capon? As a result of this procedure certain male physical characteristic will develop, but stunted: 

• The comb and wattles cease growing after castration, so the head of the capon looks small.
  
• The hackle, tail and saddle feathers grow unusually long.
• In China, the Yangbi Huang breed can grow to be the largest rooster in the Asian continent, up to 35cm long. This is thought to be caused by the castration of the roosters practised by farmers in Northern China, which affects the hormonal balance.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster

You learn something new every day!