The same day I began the collage backgrounds for the four 6" x 6" boards - which turned out to be birds - I did this slightly larger, 8" x 10", one. I didn't have any firm idea of what it would become. But I have been thinking about a large piece with three owls. So when I was ready to continue on this one, I thought I'd do an owl as a prelude to the larger piece.
Although originally I thought it would be a portrait orientation piece, in the end I decided that it would be landscape orientation. This meant that some of the collage elements would be notably "on their sides" but "oh, well!"
I knew that I wanted the background to suggest a late twilight sky. So this is how I painted it. There are probably about 10 very thin layers of acrylic paint on the darker parts. I just kept building it up until I thought it was good.
Then I did the drawing of the owl, cut it out, and with the aid of a loop of tape on the back, experimented with where I wanted to place it. This is what I decided on. I'm happy that the birds and the bee from the collage papers still show. The spirals in the lower right are coiled rusted wire embedded in coarse gel. They don't really add anything, but they were an experiment just to see what they'd look like. So now I know...
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