Barn Owl Mystery

This, my latest art journal spread, was born of very little thought or inspiration. I decided to portray a barn owl, for little reason other than I felt like it. Barn owls have good associations for me and perhaps after the previous spread inspired by my witnessing of a hawk carrying off a rat, something lighter and more positive would be a good idea.

I began by sketching the bird. And then, for reasons unknown, light showed up in the form of three candles. Where this all would go was a barn owl mystery.

Background First

After the initial sketch, it was the background which captured my attention. I decided to use a product I’ve seldom used – Woodies, thick water-soluble crayons by Stabilo. You can judge their size from this photo which also includes a regular old pencil for scale.

Backgrounds, especially those with a large expanse of a single color, are challenging for me, and I thought these crayons might work well. The leads are thick so they can quickly cover quite a bit of territory. Also, since they’re water-soluble I might get good, deep coverage. So, with nothing specific in mind, I just began scribbling all over the background. At first, my scribbles were lined up and pretty concentrated, but then I got looser with scribbled lines going in every direction. I used three different colors of blue.

As when drawing with a regular crayon, lots of the white paper showed through, but I expected that would be covered once I dissolved the color. Woodies are advertised as water soluble, but they will actually dissolve in other substances as long as they’re water based. I used Liquitex acrylic matt medium because I knew that once it dried it would be permanent. If one used just water, after it dried, the color could be dissolved again with more water—which I didn’t want.

I applied the medium and as soon as I was finished, I saw I had a thick layer of dissolved color. That fact inspired me to try scraping some of it away just to see what it would look like. I used a broad palette knife to create the white marks you see.

More Texture

I liked what I had, but I wanted the background darker, so I added another layer. By the way, I also added a little pencil detail to the owl and painted his eyes.

To deepen the background, I switched to Golden Fluid acrylic and used a technique I hadn’t tried in quite a while: dripping rubbing alcohol over wet paint. The drops of alcohol create the circular splotches you can see, mostly in the upper part. Alcohol and water don’t mix. Dropping a bit of alcohol into sufficiently wet paint repels the paint out of the area of alcohol.

This is such a fun technique. If you begin with a dry layer of light paint, then add a wash of darker paint and spot it with drops of alcohol, you’ll have a dark ground with lighter blobs where the original color shows through.

On the other hand, if you begin with a dry layer of dark paint then add lighter wet color over it and spot it with alcohol, you’ll have a lighter ground with darker blobs where the original color shows through.

This technique is a little tough to describe, but it’s easy to do. Try it! The only trick is to be sure your wash is wet enough for the alcohol to repel.

I may or may not do more with the background, but at this point I felt it was dark enough to proceed with the owl.

The Owl Comes to Life

For her, I used washes of Golden Fluid Acrylics in transparent red oxide, burnt Sienna, light Burnt Umber, and Payne's Grey.. By the way, I find it a lot easier to work these washes if I seal the paper with a coat of acrylic matt medium. Unsealed paper sucks up the washes way too fast.

For the candles, I used acrylic craft paint, which is thicker than the fluid acrylics though not as thick as tube paints. I chose opaque colors.

The Barn Owl Mystery

This was a good time to stop for a while. I'd gotten pretty far but wanted to give myself time to consider how I wanted to proceed. I know I’ll put in the candle flames and glow, but beyond that I’m not certain what else—if anything—I’ll add. Maybe some text. But I need to figure out what lies behind this spread—to solve the barn owl mystery.

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