What does one do when the chaos of chickens invades one's studio?  Well, to illustrate the Hens and Roosters movement of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, I had to take a moment to be with that chaos, to be still with constant movement.  I had to think beyond the cliche, the shortcut summation of them and look at what they were really about, for me and for others.  I thought of one of my good friends who adores chickens and raised them for a while.  I remembered my interactions with her hens and roosters which made me wish I had spent more time really studying them.  But I also remembered my friend's reactions to them, how she cooed to the hens and admired the roosters' fine display.  And I remembered my son's perfect imitation of their sound (which is not a cluck, really, but a soft, pitch-bending tickle) when face to face with chickens when he was only three years old.  They made a connection which I did not know the chickens were capable of.
   On another level, I have been around chickens enough to summon up a profile of their physical energy. Chickens' movement is unique, a kind of flow-stutter-stutter, flow-stutter.  Their eyes seem alien and when stared at, entrance the viewer.  When I recently had the opportunity to act as "inn-keeper" for some hens and their owners who were escaping local forest fires, I was surprised to see how adaptable they were and to find their clucking so soothing.
   And looking at the roosters was not difficult, as they are a staple in the local community here where I live.  They strut around the park and the businesses in old town area freely.  They seem to be inspecting humanity and its menial activity and donating their time to oversee us.  They sport bright colors and a dandy style about them.  They are festive and outspoken and "shy" does not apply.
In my psyche, it felt like the chickens were my subconscious: soft, gentle, discussing secret subjects in the background and hypnotizing if stared at.  The rooster was my conscious, active mind: running the show, crowing orders, wrangling rules and techniques, and pretty impressed with itself (that is, the conscious mind was impressed with itself, not with me, who it quickly discredited!)
   So, to pull off this illustration, I took a deep breath and dove in, without copying from a photo or even trying to give a realistic rendering of the feathered creatures.  I let the music oversee me, setting the scene.  My subconscious guided me in creating the characters and their personalities.  And my conscious mind was in charge of refining and defining the characters, so that the viewer could make out what they were looking at, in the end.  The hens/my subconscious and the roosters/my conscious mind played together and it all worked out.
   See the finished illustration below and be sure to check out my YouTube video of it for another perspective, plus a couple micro-reviews of some sketch books ("The Bird King", by Shaun Tan and "Drawing Is Magic", by John Hendrix) that encourage the interaction of the conscious and subconscious levels of creating.  You will see the link below the illustration.

  

Hens and Roosters video on Melani Grube's Creative Magic channel 

What about your creative process or your everyday life process?  Does the conscious or the subconscious rule the roost?  Or do they live in harmony?  Tell me in the comments below, please.