See the painting process behind this gouache wildlife painting

Today I’m sharing a little about this new wildlife painting I have just completed for my website. Featuring a winter owl in his pine tree, with snow falling all around. I posted a little reel on instagram about the process in making this piece and it proved very popular - so here it is broken down into steps.

From @bex_parkin

The idea behind this painting was to create something that was looser and more textured then my previous owls. I have painted more than a few of these gorgeous birds and absolutely love this subject!

The Beginnings

After sketching out in pencil on RWS watercolour paper roughly A3 in size, I started with the most important element in painting owls - the eyes. It is so important to get this right as it is their eyes that bring the magic! I often will paint the face of an animal before moving onto the rest of the artwork.

Colour Blocking

Like most artists, I use colour blocking to create the basic shapes in a painting. However, it definitely is the scary part! You just have to go for it and trust the process. It will help you create the form of the subject as well as creating an under painting layer to start building from.

Next Step

I continue to build in smaller blocks of colour, working from several reference images to help me. At this point, I’m starting to create shadow on the right hand side of the owl to give him form, but mostly I am concentrating on being loose with my paint brush. I didn’t want this piece to be a hyper real painting of an owl, but rather capture the colours and textures in a more general way.

Details

Once I have the under painting completed I start with the best bit - adding the details. Again, I’m concentrating on the feeling of feathers rather then being super acurate. I use a variety of techniques for this and change paint brush sizes and shapes to help me. This was really helpful when creating the bark effect - a longer brush with less control - created interesting, natural shapes on the tree.

This painting is actually a mixed media piece, as I used pencil crayons to add finer details.

Using pencil crayons for feather detail.

Background Colour

I had already decided to do the background in a rich blue colour so the laborious process of filling in the gaps began! Once the majority of this was done, I began to add the pine needles with a long thin brush.