Drawings of a chicken as it grows up

Mieke Roth, a professional science illustrator, keeps chickens. For fun, she decided to make a single drawing every day of a single chicken as it grew up over a couple months. From her project page:

Since this is undoable if I work like I do for my other pen and ink drawings, I have given myself a maximum amount of time I can spend on it: one hour. I don’t use real pen and ink, but the pen and ink equivalent in Painter combined with my Cintiq.

A nice surprise is that I don’t know how this specific chicken will turn out: it is a third generation crossbreed of my Breda fowl and Silki Bantams.

Little chicken growing up! (miekeroth.com, via Drawn!)

[#1 posted by metafactory , August 1, 2008 11:52 AM]

This is an interesting project. I hope that she carries her project through to the plate (or is it not an eating chicken?).

This kind of reminds me of the animal portraits that Vancouver artist Carrie Walker does.

[#2 posted by Yamara , August 1, 2008 12:56 PM]

I think carrying through to the egg would be more appropriate.

Aristotelian, even.

[#3 posted by Secret_Life_of_Plants , August 1, 2008 1:30 PM]

I think it is a single drawing every week.

[#4 posted by Tgg161 , August 1, 2008 1:46 PM]

Addressing #1&3:
From what I see, the project completed in December 2007.

The early drawings were every day, but then tapered off to once a week-ish as the drawings became more time consuming.

Fascinating drawings, though. Makes me wish I'd become a scientific illustrator.

[#5 posted by Talia , August 1, 2008 1:53 PM]

Beautiful, adorable drawings. I love this.

#1 Seems to be you'd have to have a pretty cold heart to do something like this then kill and eat the chicken, though :P