Key West Rooster 3

I subscribe to a bi-weekly e-mail newsletter from the Canadian artist Robert Genn. His letters are always both insightful and informative. This past week he introduced his readers to the term Shibui. It's a Japanese term that can mean irregularity of form, openess to nature, roughness of texture, and naturalness of daily life. These ideas seemed to fit perfectly with what I am hoping to achieve with the Key West Rooster. The idea here is not to convey realism but rather to convey the perfection of undisciplined lines that are so often found in nature.

Keeping Genn's belief that "perfection is boring" in mind, I tackled both the hen house walls and the hay. But then just to keep the ying and yang going I did go back and tighten up the edges of the waddle and the feet. And to keep my critic happy, I yellowed the nails!