Inktober-ish Day 5 “Chicken”

This was supposed to be an Inktober, but ran out of time to ink. So, it’s really more Inktober-ish.

The preliminary sketch for 5th day of Inktober.

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Hot!

For no apparent reason, I’ve redrawn this one image several times. However, this time my reason is the Illustration Friday’s Topic “Hot.” So, here you go… again.

Just in case your curious:

The third time.

The second time.

The first time.

chicken

Being wet made Harriet absolutely cranky and very very mad, which caused all the other chickens in the coop to walk on eggshells.

rare as hen’s teeth

While gazing at herself in the mirror this morning, Henrietta was frozen with a sense of pride at being one of the rare hens with teeth.
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A bit of a stretch perhaps, what with the Illustration Friday’s word of the week being “frozen.” But being a relatively new user of a Wacom tablet and playing around with Photoshop brushes, I redid an older post today. So, being quite lazy, figured heck, why not post this… heh!

fail

Henrietta prided herself on being one of the rare hens with teeth and never failed to brush them.

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I’m still on this animal idiom kick. I imagine it’s because ideas for daily sketches can be a bit elusive at times and this theme is pretty rich with visuals. Why, I haven’t even exhausted the chicken phrases yet.

Let’s see, there was the “chicken who crossed the road”, supposedly to get to the other side. However, I think that’s “a cock-and -bull story.” If she hadn’t “counted her chickens before they hatched”, she may not have “chickened out”. Now, she’ll have to wait “till the “chickens come home to roost.”

Sorry, had to get that get that off my chest.

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I’m cheating a bit. This is from an older post. I freshened Henrietta up a bit with some color and pushed her chicken butt back on the stage. If you would like to see the older post and the black and white image, take a look here.

The Illustration Friday theme this week is “Fail.”

rare as hen’s teeth

Henrietta prided herself on being one of the rare hens with teeth

I’m still on this animal idiom kick. I imagine it’s because ideas for daily sketches can be a bit elusive at times and this theme is pretty rich with visuals. Why, I haven’t even exhausted the chicken expressions yet.

Let’s see, there was the “chicken who crossed the road”, supposedly to get to the other side. I think it’s “a cock-and -bull story.” If she hadn’t “counted her chickens before they hatched”, she may not have “chickened out”. Now, she’ll have to wait “till the “chickens come home to roost.”

Sorry, had to get that get that off my chest.

Speaking of crossing the road, and getting things off your chest, I saw something perplexing as I took my daily stroll to Starbucks, today at lunch. I saw a fellow pedestrian, a young man in his early twenties, dart out in front of a car, cause the driver to slam on his breaks, barely escape becoming a grease spot, and then, just carry on, calmly, without missing a beat.

Now, I realize California state law claims pedestrians have the right of way, but it’s only if you are NOT jaywalking, ie: breaking the law. So I had to wonder, is this guy just completely oblivious, or does he have what is known (well, at least to me) as “Pedestrian Bubblitis?”

The onset of “Bubblitis” or “Bi-pedal Idiocity”, usually begins around puberty and can last up to 70 years. The symptoms consist of, a sense of dwelling within a protective bubble, an overblown sense of entitlement, and acute common sense deficiency accompanied by runny nose and fever.

Apparently, there is no cure for this affliction, but I wonder if adopting the rules of the sea (yielding right of way to the larger vessel) might be in order. I mean a large SUV, (say a Suburban or Escalade,) could knock you right out of your protective bubble and onto your ass in 2 seconds flat! So why, as a soft, smooshy, pedestrian, wouldn’t you yield to it?

Just a thought.

These are questions that haunt me, and what any of this has to do with chickens, I’m not really sure.

mad as a wet hen

A month or so ago, I thought it would be a super cool idea to do a children’s book, illustrating animal idioms, like “The Bee’s Knees”, “When Pigs Fly”, “Happy as a Clam”, etc.

Well, as it turns out, it’s been done. At least a half dozen times. Maybe a million. Not sure. But a lot.

Whatever. It’s a cool idea.

So I scrawled out a very angry wet hen at lunch. Might not be the most original idea, but it was fun illustrating such a fowl mood. Get it? Fowl mood….(sigh).

Afterwards, I searched around online and found there were quite a few ideas on the origin of the phrase “mad as a wet hen”. One of the more interesting explanations was from a woman, who grew up on a farm in the south, who explains that after a hen lays her eggs, she’s all about sitting on them until they hatch. Even if you gather up all her eggs, she will still sit on the empty nest. So in order to “break her” and get her laying more eggs, the farmer would lift her off the nest and dunk her in water. She’d then go right back to her nest, so it had to be done two or three times, after which she’d be mad as hell and start “fussing and scrambling about”. But apparently this “broke her” and she’d start laying eggs again.

Truth be told, that story made me a feel bad for the poor hen. I was under the impression that the saying was more about chickens not having much of a sense of humor when they get squirted with prank corsages.

At any rate, I think I might do some more of these idiom drawings. Stay tuned.