Feeding the Chickens

I thought this painting was finished, but when my daughter, another artist walked into my studio, she said "I love it", followed by "What are all the rocks in the background?" Since I had chickens in mind when I painted the background, the shapes looked like chickens to me. At first, I thought there was nothing I could do about the "rocks" since the ink drawing was under many layers of clear encaustic, but after checking Goggle images, looking for chickens feeding, I saw that I could do some scraping and draw a bit with very soft charcoal. I added some more oil glazes and carefully fused all that into the wax surface. What do you think?

first image

cradled board, so the painting doe not need framing

last version

detail