With the silhouette leaves around him, I think this piece has something of a decorative style. I used Peacock Green, Peacock Blue, and Blue Violet for the sky and really like the slightly greenish tinge. It's a nice change from the background colors in the others I've done so far, but still goes well with them.
This is the first drawing of the series that I've done on white paper. The others have been on Fawn Stonehenge drawing paper. It's quite a different look, and for the series of nine drawings to hold together I'll have to be sure that at least three of them are on white paper.
As in the first owl, this guy has complex plumage patterns, but I approached them in a different way. Instead of outlining then filling shapes, I concentrated on shapes of different values. I began with the lightest values and filled the shapes with close set back and forth strokes without outlining. As I proceeded to darker and darker values, the plumage pattern began to emerge. I think this was a more successful approach and also somewhat easier.
In the Placerville Arts Association we have had a few demonstrators, one working in oil and the other in pastel, who used a technique that focused on value shapes. The oil artist demonstrated a portrait and the pastel artist did a landscape. They both mentioned the name of the artist who pioneered this technique. I'll have to research who it was and find out more about it. I think it would well with animals as well.
Meanwhile, I'm working on owl number five and have made several tiny polymer clay bear pendants to hopefully sell to benefit Idaho Black Bear Rehab.
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