Owl Projects

The "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" motion picture opens on Friday Sept 24th and my kids are stoked.  Since there is never a shortage of Owl projects at our house I thought I give you some new Owl art projects as well as revisit the old Owls from the past.

First up a pastel resist Owl.  You know me,,,,pastel resist is one of my favs so follow along.


Click on the photo to see larger and more detail.

Provide your young artists with some reference material.   Professional artists use reference photos all the time so inspire your students with books from the library, google images, whatever you can get your hands on.

Have them sketch out their Owls. Some may try to copy a photo exactly but as they gain confidence they'll start to make changes to suit their instinct....it's all a part of the process.

Using light colored pastels (white and yellow) mark out some of the features.  Do some feather detail...some leaf shapes...some veining in the leaves...outline the main components (Owl and tree limbs).  Also mark areas you want to remain white like the head and breast feathers.

It's hard to see on this photo but I have quite a lot marked out.

Start painting with disk tempera.

I wanted to use fall colors to keep with the season.  I start with some yellow around the Owl, sunlight filtering thru the trees on our sleepy friend.

Drop in some more fall colors...maybe a bit of green here and there for the leaves that haven't turned yet.

A good rule of thumb is to put some intense, darker color in at least 2 of the corners..helps to push the focal point and grounds the painting.

Paint the Owl brown.... the pastel will resist the paint highlighting the features you have marked.

Put some dark brown, almost black, color in the tree limbs and add some branches here and there.  You don't necessarily see all the branches or in their entirety as portions are blocked out with leaves.

Add extra color where needed...maybe some veining in the leaves with some contrasting fall colors...a little dark brown on the Owl's wing feathers.  Add the eyes and you're done!

Remember this guy from about 2 years ago you can check out my post for this project here.


I'll have another Owl project on Friday so make sure you stop on by........

See you then.