The Real Chicken Run

My illustration of a layered dress outfit

Once again, this project is based around some rather unusual inspiration. It originally started being about birds in general but I got distracted and started to concentrate on chickens. Being a vegetarian, I found it really interesting to take photos of the iside chest cavities and skeletons to get shapes for pleating and embroidery. I warn you now, this project is not for the squeemish!

My photograph of chicken wishbones

The wishbones largely inspired the print I used on this strapless top design. I felt that a print using wishbones was a more discreet way to encorporate my theme into the garments, rather than my original idea of using a print with crows and chickens in. The top pleated part was inspired by the same ribcage image as the shorts (below).

My photograph of wishbone dress

One repeat of my wishbone print

One of my illustrations of the wishbone dress and jodhpur outfit

Seeing the illustrations allow you to see the outfit in full, in the situation they were intended to be worn in. The style of the illlustrations give a slightly dark and sinister mood. The models are quite skeletal and reflect a lot upon features seen commonly in birds. Especially using paper cone beaks and giant chicken feet.

My research photograph of inside chickens

The photograph above really interested me and inspired a pair of shorts. I used the ribecage to inspire some pleat shapes and the patterns down the breastbone was used as a central embroidery pattern.

Photograph of shorts, inspired by the chicken ribcage

One of my illustrations of the shorts outfit

I thought it would be a bit more interesting to play with proportions and give them uber long stick legs and huge chickens feet. Illustrations are a mixture of fineliner pen, watercolour, markerpen and food colouring.

Along with the model illustrations, I also did a lot of research illustrations of anatomical objects. I got really interested in the bone structure of feet and created some really bizarre block colourings and panelling ideas. I encorporated it into a few of my designs but felt it worked better as research rather than a literal tranlation.

Collage of images and my illustrations from research

All images subject to copyright