As I said in my last post, I am done with miniatures for now. I enjoyed the seeping movement and relative freedom that came from working on a larger scale. So, I decided to blow up the owl. No not literally (shame on you for thinking that)! I pulled out my handy-dandy tracer enlarger and scaled up the owl to fill an 8x10 (quarter) sheet of watercolour paper. I only put in his head and eyes, and a bit of the chest. Then I traced him out. For a change, this didn't take as long as I had feared and so wasn't too tedious. I went over the whole image with my kneaded eraser to dull the pencil lines down. If you don't do this the lines may show through the painting and you are less able to lift them out after you apply paint over them.
If I've done it well, you shouldn't be able to see much in this pic. I only want the lines to be there as a guide, not a rule. I'm planning to work wet-in-wet to achieve a look of soft feathers and maybe some motion (wind ruffling or something). I want to work in a way similar to how I did the crocus, but I'm not sure which part to tackle first. In the crocus it is easy to section the painting into "pieces" as each petal can be done individually. But in the owl I'm not seeing an easy way to section it. I think I may just work in colour stages and keep an eye on what brushes I use instead.
If I work in layers and keep to the synthetic brushes for the successive layers and keep a light hand so I don't accidentally lift underlying layers...I think that might just work.
I also sat down and planned out my colours for the painting.
In my planning I tried to lay down not just the colour, but application as well. So in the colours I plan to use on the feathers, I've tried out a bit of fading technique to see how well the colour will stand up to that too.
Next time - painting begins!
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