Good Afternoon, Gents!

Here it is. Hot off the presses! 31 hours exactly. Eastern Screech Owl (red morph). I've never done one before. Hella fun to do!

This will be for my sister for Christmas. Probably make her cry. Apparently, not something I've grown out of.

I would probably say that a significant chunk of my time was spent creating lines on the tree. Random patterns, but in a general direction, especially if I want to convey the idea that it rises of sinks. Or that it curves on the sides, which I accomplished by making the lines much closer together. Another optical illusion. Personally, I find optical illusions awesome. I don't know why, but I do. Using colored pencil to accomplish this was infinitely easier than using oil pastel.

Again, the colored pencils that I use are oil based, as opposed to wax based. They blend perfectly with oil pastels.

There are a couple of places in the tan bark right under the owl that I experimented with shading, so it looks like it chunks of the bark have been taken out. That worked out very well. I should've done more of that. Right under his tail in the tan bark, I experimented with lines to make it look like it was a different kind of texture, maybe even raised up. That didn't work so well, but I used a small enough area that instead of drawing too much attention & affecting the drawing negatively, it was just right to add variety to it. It's always good to experiment with shapes, shades, colors, lines, etc. Albeit, probably smartest to experiment in sketches, not the final piece, but whatever.

I was also able to squeeze some blue around his cheek & that cowlick feather by his tail, lol. A stripe of dark blue, careful not to get onto the surrounding colored pencil, followed by a stripe of light blue & a stripe of white to blend it together consistent with the surrounding background. I also was able to give the appearance of individual feathers by varying the depth of penetration of the oil pastel into the colored pencil feathers on his head & chest, sometimes doing a little random stripe of light blue to show a separation of feathers.

Finally, a few random twigs. I had them going away from the tree seemingly from behind it to justify using such a dark brown as opposed to the very tan branch he's sitting on. It makes it look like they're in a shadow. I had to do it that way, because there was no way a light tan was going to over power the darker blue. I wouldn't mind putting more in there, but there is such a thing as overdoing it.

I've been doing multiple drawings for the past 6ish weeks. I think I'm done doing that for a while, limiting myself to just working on one at a time. Having been pent up all summer & September due to it basically raining the whole month, I had a surplus of creative energy which I poured into multiple projects (Cooper's Hawk, Screech Owl, & Downy). I can get away with that for a while, but not forever, because there's only so much energy & focus & drive if you will. Dividing that among multiple projects simultaneously has never served me for very long. At the same time, I find it unbelievably hard to focus on just one piece when I have such a surplus of creative energy.

Anyway, hope y'all enjoyed this one.