"Wings of the Storm"

Another painting! We went to the zoo on Wednesday and I had my camera and Dad's lens, so I got some neat shots at the bird show. They had a barn owl, and I took this really neat photo of it in flight.


I wanted this painting to have a dark, foreboding mood, so I darkened the sky and moved the owl to create the composition. I'm working on thin, foam-core illustration board; I airbrushed the background yesterday afternoon.


Last night and this afternoon, I've been working on laying in the basic colors after transferring my drawing. In case anyone is interested, here's how I did it. I use the grid method to draw out my composition, but I don't draw the lines right on the painting. Instead, I have several cardboard templates with different sized grids over which I lay a piece of tracing paper. Then I open the picture with Photoshop and select the View-Grid option (this is customizeable in Edit-Preferences-Grids and somethings... :) I use a paper weight to keep grid and paper aligned, then draw exactly what's in each square. Finally I use graphite paper (gray or white) to transfer the drawing to the painting surface (I used white on this painting, so it would show up on the dark background.) Anyway, enough technical stuff. Here's about where I'm at now.


I'm calling it "Wings of the Storm," thank you Daniel for that suggestion. I probably would have just called it "Barn Owl Flying at Artist." Just kidding... ;) It's unlike anything I've painted before, and I'm excited about the mood it will capture. I'm going to enter it in the ABA Birding contest at the end of September.

Oh, I've got my next duck stamp figured out! More on that later.