Hi there,
Today I'm going to do a quick process post about my latest painting - "Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina)" It was a piece I did for Losing Altitude - an upcoming book about threatened/endangered birds. This collaborative art book will feature over 50 artists and well over
100 pages of beautiful, full-color art of endangered birds from the
world over.
Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/LosingAltitude
And now for the process.
1. As usual, I sketched out some thumbnails. to see what layout I wanted to work with.
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| As you can see from the finished product, the image ended being a combination of all 4 of these. |
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2. After getting my references together I went on to penciling. I like use the double penciling approach - where I first get the shapes and elements down more loosely with my blue pencil and then go over ad add more details with a graphite pencil.
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| Close up of the adult owl. |
3. Then came my favourite part- the inking, using my black microns.
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| Adding even more detail during this stage. |
After inking the whole image, I erase the pencil marks.
4. For this piece I decided to do a grey-scale values under-layer. It seemed like a logical idea since the owlets were mostly grey.
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| Almost fully rendered under-layer. I ended up darkening the adult owl some more later. |
5. Then I got my coloured, waterproof inks out and finished up the painting, sprinkling some table salt on the background for hazy effect. Oh, and of course - for the final touch I used white gouache to add some shine and detail to the birds' feathers.
Here are some close ups:
-Original size: 11 x 17.7"
-Materials: Waterproof coloured inks, microns, white gouache, and salt on 300 series Strathmore Vellum Bristol paper
Prints available at my
Society6 shop =)
Cheers for now!
