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Chicken scratching, in the context of line improvement, is a habit that indicates a lack of confidence. Their lines seem to be doubtful, careful, and indecisive. It's not entirely about the scratching itself, but more of what it means and what it could do to your journey of improvement.
AND chicken-scratching takes more time than just drawing it plain. sketches don't have to be perfect & are not the final product, so why don't they take a chance with just drawing the shapes & line like they're kindergarteners playing with crayons. drawing a line, no matter how not-perfect, takes less than 3-5 seconds of scratching it, is what ...
To an extent, sure you can scratch out a few lines, but start drawing over them with long, fluid lines. It really improves the overall aesthetic of your artwork. One problem with chicken scratching is that it makes you focus on just small parts of the drawing, rather than the whole, meaning that proportions often suffer.
There was a YouTuber artist I followed a long time ago (that I think I unfollowed now) who talked about this. He said to first draw with a pen so you can commit to your mistakes. He said people who draw with chicken lines are usually uncomfortable making mistakes. Drawing with a pen will force you to get uncomfortable with the flaws.
Chicken scratching absolutely holds artists back, I see it all the time. Relearning everything would throw me back and the result would look a lot worse. Compared to drawing from the shoulder, chicken scratching is a cheap (easy to learn) trick to get fast results. And there are many other things I have to work on.
Possums famously do this when they get scared. One theory about the line method in particular is that the chicken thinks it sees a snake, though this isn't proven. And there are other methods of getting a chicken to enter a "hypnotized state" including tucking its head under its wing as though it's sleeping. Reply reply.
Chicken scratching is considered bad for a lot of reasons but in my opinion the biggest reason is that being confident about your line (brush stroke) and being able to find your line is important when you start painting. For a lot of art schools drawing is a preparation for painting and they teach drawing with that in mind.
Previsualise your marks and only give yourself one go at drawing them. Draw more from the shoulder. To get rid of chicken scratching you have to make a very active effort to improve your line quality. The first lesson over at r/ArtFundamentals has some excellent information and exercises for this. Thank you, will have a look at it.
As a chicken owner, I second this. However, I do have a hen who plays dead as a defense response. Her only response when being threatened actually. She's really small, so every other chicken I have likes to bully the shit out of her. The hen she grew up with died, so she's also really lonely, only one of my other chickens tolerate her.
Also if you really enjoy chickens and drawing them might I recommend looking up some of the show chicken breeds like the Polish Chicken, Silkie Chicken, Sultan Chicken, Cochins, and Wyandottes. Also, you shouldn't be embarrassed of your art. Art is hard. There is anatomy, depth, colour theory, light, perspective, composition, medium choice ...