An owl painting process
My process is slow and intricate and full of beauty, for me personally anyway, or I thought it was just for me. I am touched by how many people comment about how much they enjoy me sharing the ins and outs of creating a painting from start to finish. I think it is seeing the wee creature come to life - the I think it is seeing the wee creature come to life - the simple act of putting pencil to paper that with many, many layers creates something we recognise as a little being, a creature with their own personhood.
And that is ultimately what my work is about. Reciprocity. Connection. Recognition and respect. I honour these beings as a way to acknowledge them personally, to say that ‘I see you’. I see your personhood, I recognise you as my kin, I want to do what I can to share your story, I need you to continue to be in this circle of life that we are weaving together. Yeah, this work gets really deep sometimes, there is a lot of heartfelt philosophising, many in depth conversations, lots of cooing about how beautiful they are.
Over the weekend of 10th October 2021 I shared my progress in creating this honouring of a Rufous-legged Owl (Strix rufipes) a native of Argentina and Chile, on my Instagram Stories. I received so many comments, replies, DM’s, my heart was so full and I was so excited to share with you all. Your reaching out became completely intertwined with my process, and regaled her with comments of how pretty she was, and I dare say I saw the glint in her eye, maybe felt a ruffle or two of her feathers as she displayed her delight. I wanted to dedicate the weekend to diving deep into this creature as a part of my Silent Flight collection. All up she took me around 25 hours, maybe a little more, with a size of 28 x 35cm or 11 x 14 in.
I will always begin a piece with the eyes. This is deeply intentional - I want to converse with my subject from that point on, and having their eyes there to focus on allows me to see their personhood and in many ways be guided by them as to how to proceed. While I work realistically, I am not a photo-realistic painter - I want to evoke the feeling of a particular area (as in how it would feel under my own hand, how it would feel to personally have fur or feathers or wings etc) but not necessarily show every single feather. I want you to look at a finished piece and recognise the painting as a representation of the subject, but importantly, to still be able to recognise that it is a painting, not a photo. That you are seeing this subject through my eyes.
I work on hot pressed watercolour paper - a few different brands, but mostly Fabriano Artistico. This is a very smooth surface compared to canvas, for example, and it behaves differently to rougher or sanded papers used for pastel. These smooth surfaces require you to work from light to dark (the opposite of painting with a wet medium of acrylic or oils), so the lightest layers happen first. Most of my pieces will have layers in white, ivory or lighted cool or warm greys. I primarily use Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, with a healthy dose of Caran d’Ache Pablo and Luminance and some Derwent Studio/Artists and Lightfast
For the eyes, I will start with whatever colour the highlight or catch-light is - here that is near white, so white is what I used. I will go over the light graphite in the area I am focused on, picking most of that up with a kneadable eraser as I go, then add my lightest layer. For eyes, I then go straight to the darkest colour to mark out the eyelids, pupil and any dark shading around the eye. Then comes layers of colour. For this owl, one of her eyes is in very dark shadow, and her eyes themselves are not the light yellow of a Great Grey owl, or the vibrant orange of a Long-eared owl, so I had to weigh what colouring I wanted to bring in - I wanted her beautiful eyes to “pop”, but they needed to be realistic. Here we have light layers of burnt ochre, bistre, burnt sienna, naples yellow, walnut brown, dark sepia, indigo, chocolate. There is a warmth to the eyes, so the colours I choose have a red to yellow tone, with a little coolness in the shadows. I spend a lot of time on the eyes, it is the most important part of any painting. Humans rely on using eyes to determine the mood and intention not just of other humans, but all other creatures too. It is generally the first place we look at on any animals face, and it in a painting it is something we instinctively recognise as ‘off’ if the proportions and values are not correct - colour less so, but the shape and the interplay of lights and darks must be correct if you are going for ‘realistic’. I also work in light layers and build up value - working with pencil can be rough on the hand and wrist if you press hard for any length of time. Light layers prevent that burnishing burn, plus it really does allow for complexity of colour. So light layers of darker colours from the outside of the eye in towards the pupil, and lighter colours from the pupil out, paying close attention to the reference for where the shadows are cast, be they from the body's position relative to the lightsource, something external, or even the eyelid and brow. Once I am happy with the eye, I will begin on the feathers (or fur) directly around the eye and work outwards from there. Once I start adding colour outside the eye, it is usual to need to go back into the eye later and darken some dark areas. From there on out it is a process of darkening or defining previous areas as more areas are added adjacently, it is a bit of a dance.
Moving out from the eyes, the facial discs of owls are quite complex, and very different to working on, for example, an eagle’s face. The concavity of the disc collects sound waves and directs them to the ears, and they are made up of auricular feathers with open vanes, so they look rather like lots of thin lines criss-crossing all over the place. Extremely interesting, a bit more difficult to draw where you have to work from light to dark (much easier to add fine light lines on top of dark paint! I overcome this by ensuring there is a good lot of light colour down first (in this instance, a layer of white followed by a layer of lightest cold grey because this area is rather blue in the reference), then build up darker colours, and finally, where necessary, coming in with a ceramic knife and carefully scrape back some of the dark colour to expose light areas in those feathery shapes. The brow and lore (the area between the eyes and nostrils of a bird) are very light to white - but what is white? What we see as white on an animal is usually just as many colours as the rest of the body, just in their lightest possible tint. On this owl what you are seeing as ‘white’ is the lightest cold grey, some light blue, a medium warm grey, a medium cool grey, and even dark sepia to define the shadows. The ruff of the disc, the outer edge, is made up of lots of small, stiff feathers bunched together, very different to the feathers on the face, lots of areas of shadowy shapes, small highlights, and irregular patterning. For this owl’s ruff there were a lot of warm colours coming in, browns in the yellow to red range, so some burnt umber, walnut brown. There is still quite a lot of blue-greys on the feathers on the head outside of the ruff, but as we move away from the face the colouring is much more brown and golden.
I’m often asked why I don’t do a sweep of one colour around a whole piece, then come back and add the next colour etc, working on the piece as a whole, which is a more common practice with painting. I don’t have a great answer, other than it allows me to really focus on one area at a time, which fits in with the amount of time I have to work on any one piece while I still have a day job. Feathers particularly are complex indeed, and working on too large a section at once makes me feel a little scattered. It is a bit of a personal preference I think - and it may change over time. I am certainly not adverse to trying new things!
Next I moved onto the wing on the left (the bird’s right). I generally tend to move from top left to bottom right when I work. While I place a piece of tracing paper under my hand to avoid transferring the oils of my skin to the paper, and to avoid smudging the pencil pigment everywhere, I still find it best to try not to disturb an area too much, so avoid working back on top of or over areas I have finished for any length of time. While there is a little cool or blue-grey colouring in some of the cast shadow areas under individual feathers, this is a really warm area. Lots of lighter, warm browns, some added bistre, 10% brown ochre, and peachy orange colours - there are some lovely Luminance colours in here, apart from the 10% brown ochre, including herculaneum red, burnt ochre 50%, dark flesh 40% as well as Pablo apricot, light ochre and ochre. Layers of Van Dyke brown along with walnut brown and burnt umber, some nougat and brown ochre. A quick note on coloured pencils here - the same ‘colour’ across different brands can look very different indeed, for example, Van Dyke brown in Polychromos, Pablo and Studio are all quite different. This is to do with the pigment used, but also the amount of oil and wax it is carried in. Here I used Van Dyke from all three of these brands together - the Studio version is more yellow, the Luminance has a slight blue/purple hint and the Polychromos is redder. Also, these colours are layered with other colours as well, so you don’t have just a single colour visible. It is wonderfully complex and makes me constantly marvel at the magic of nature. You can also see here I have laid down an underlayer of ivory across her belly, and you can see at the bottom of the chest feathers that I have done already that I have marked the dark or shadowed part of the bars. I will go in over the ivory laid down now with dark sepia to define the shadow and under part of the bars, small sections at a time, then come back over with colour and shading, and the little wispy orange and buff feathers that seem to be between. The rest of her body and tail will be an interplay of all the colours I have described so far - rusty browns, orangy-buffs, blue-grey shadows and various markings of them all. I work slowly, usually a section no larger than 7 or 8cm square (3-4in), because it is very easy to get lost in those feathery markings. Again, my aim is not photo realism (were you to look at this reference you would note lots of discrepancies), but our brains are very quick to pick out inconsistencies in pattern, and you would notice if I got one section of the colouring back to front! For those fluffy in-between feathers, lots of layers of gradually darkening strokes of colour, then come back in with the ceramic knife to bring out some highlights.
The other major part of this painting that must be made to take a minor role is the branch. Oh, there are layers and layers and layers here too, and were I to let it, a branch this size could easily take as long as the bird. This is where it is important to define what the focus of your piece is - here, obviously, it is the owl. I want your eyes to be drawn repeatedly to the owl herself - you should notice the branch, but it is only part of the supportive environment. The branch in the reference is a complex ecosystem of moss and lichen, and although beautiful, it needed to be adjusted for my painting. I simplified and darkened everything, using some directional ‘cracks’ and weathering to help draw the eye up to the bird and somewhat mimic her feather patterning. To get that dark, dark colouring requires a lot of layers and some degree of burnishing. I kept with some suggestions of mossy greens for interest, and to help the orangy feathers pop, but there are many layers of olives, the usual reddish browns, charcoals and darkest greys, blue greys and a lot of black. It was also important to me that her foot and talons stand out, so it is a lot darker than the reference, but I think it works well for this composition.
Most importantly, all along the way I am having a conversation with her - what does she need next, are these colours right, am I getting this intricacy across correctly. I tell her how beautiful she is often, and I will usually stroke her face as I stand up from my desk and say good night when finished for the day. Sure, it may sound a little strange, but it absolutely works for me, it builds my connection to these creatures and the world I share with them.
I hope this all makes sense, and that it may have answered some of your questions about how this sort of work comes together. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact me and ask away, I am more than happy to share! And let me know if this sort of blog post is helpful so I know whether to do more in the future.
