Barred Owl

Story

Troy Payne works at a company called Talon. He commissioned an owl for his office. I found an image I liked on Wikipedia: By Mdf – Taken by Mdf, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=261200

Process

Dec 3, 2022. A raw umber value study – I forgot to ink in the sketch, so I lost most of the drawing as I applied raw umber. Sydney said this was going to happen at least once in my life. I have a feeling it will happen again.

Dec 5. Background. I was intimidated by all the complexity, so I left a few branches for detail and added vague light spots to indicate muted distant lights. The colors I used were viridin, raw umber, and ultramarine. I wanted to block in the darker parts of the feathers since they would be underneath the lighter parts. I had no idea how to handle the feathers, this was an attempt to at least define them.

Jan 11, 2023. I worked on the front branches for a couple of passes. Twigs might have been mostly greys, a touch of cerulean blue since the lichen are slightly green. I added violet to the twig behind the bird. For some reason, it worked.

Then I put my big girl pants on and attempted the feathers. No way was I going to paint every feather. I fought the tendency to stop looking at the reference and invent feathers. I used white and Naples yellow for the light part of the feathers, burnt sienna, and maybe some raw umber for the darker brown.

Jan 18. Working my way into the face area and finishing the tail. I put a bit more yellow in the under feathers, going whiter as it reached his chest. The beak is under finer feathers; it needed to go in now.

Jan 19. I blocked in the face and neck, mostly focusing on values. I wasn’t sure how to handle the complexity of the neck feathers, so I thought I’d do darker areas first since the lighter feather edges would cover them. I also thought it would be nice to avoid this for a little longer. Even though eyes should be the last reward, I attempted the eyes to see how that would go. In the photo, the eyes are mostly black, and honestly, at the distance, he would naturally be; you’d never see any highlights – but that wouldn’t be fun to look at in a painting. I used ultramarine to create subtle highlights.

Jan 26. Now the background was bothering me. I needed to give it more branches in the distance. Stupid time to correct this. I also forgot what colors I used to make the original background. Colors this round: phthalo blue, burnt umber, ivory black, titanium white, tiny bit of viridian.

Feb 4. I’ve been studying the Munsell color system and bought the student book with swatches. I thought it would be interesting to see what colors I’ve used and where I might head.

Feb 6. I redid the eyes. Also worked on the feathers around the neck and eyes.

I showed the painting to my teacher, Sean Beavers. He suggested I dull down the bright yellow feathers to put more focus on the face. He suggested doing a glaze using Davy’s Grey, which is a transparent grey. He also suggested adding more detail to the front branch -the telephoto lens used in the photo made that front branch disappear on the left. He also said to bump up some of the nearer branches so there is more progression into the background. When you think a painting is finished, take it to Sean – and then do whatever he says.

March 20. I made a glaze of Davy’s Grey and put it on the chest and tail feathers. I added detail to the front branch on the right where it enters the scene. I also found a branch from our old pear tree with lichen to use as a model and added lichen near the owl to bring your eye to the branch. I added lichen to the bottom right branch. I bumped up the contrast on the small twig behind his head so it would still sit behind the owl but start to bring you into the distance.

April. I put it on the mantel, and after staring at it through several dinners, I felt the left edge needed to exit more strongly. Also, the twig behind the owl’s head was too contrasty. I added lichen to the left edge of the main branch and gave the twig a little of that lichen blue-green glow. I finally decided it was done and signed it quietly on the lower left.