This 16" by 20", acrylic painting, is of a Great Horned Owl, a bird native to Arizona. The bird in the painting is based on a photograph by wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela (in his "Birds of Arizona Field Guide"), who has given me permission to use his bird photos as a basis for my bird paintings. The colors of the Great Horned Owl are browns, yellow ochre, and peach with tufts of white. He perches on the limb of a large tree, and his image is framed by the limbs and branches of the tree. The sky is blew.

I basecoated the bird in dark browns and dark ochres, and then built up the bird's final colors, layer by layer, with a badger haired brush that created the appearance of thin feathers and soft tufts. The lines of angled brown colors were made both by a thin round brush using positive strokes, and with the badger brush by filling in the negative spaces around the angled lines. I painted some washes of raw sienna and burnt sienna over areas of the bird that are in shadow.

The tree was base coated in with broad strokes of different dark colors, such as burnt umber, unltramarine blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre. White paint, tinged with warm and cool colors, was gently skimmed over the tree limbs to mimic a bark like texture, and dark paint was used to indicate areas in the tree that had been hollowed out or cut. I used foreshortening to show the limbs branching from each other in a variety of directions.

The canvas has been sprayed with clear acrylic gloss varnish to keep the colors bright, and has been signed by the artist. This painting ships flat in a no-bend cardboard box. Shipping and handling cost is $48.

This is a ready made project; no customizations are available. For Custom paintings of other birds please submit a custom job with this artist.

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