Eurasian Eagle Owl

Our new project for Wednesday's is a photo I recently took in Malta of a Eurasian Eagle Owl.  Falconry is an age-old tradition of Malta and I got to hold this guy on my arm and let him fly off to pick up some food in the distance.  They are a magnificent bird and up close they are awesome.

So, I wanted this to be an up-close and personal painting.  Some of my students drew him a little further back to avoid too much detail.  The colours of Malta, with their bright blue, green and yellow boats were the inspiration behind the owl.  I used Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Yellow Deep and Cadmium Red Light and just basically blobbed the colours all over the board.  I started with the very light colours and gradually made them darker.  I then made some shadow colours for an even darker tone e.g. blue mixed with a bit of red, green with a bit of red, and dabbed that into the dark colours on the canvas.  Whatever you do in the background, feather it off as much as you can for that out-of-focus look.

5th Lesson - Marylyn Mayo

With my 3 basic colours made up, I am starting from around the eyes again.  You will notice as you move around the face, that there are slight variations in skin tone.  I am not concentrating on the one area, as I don't want the colours to vary too much.  So, as I move out from the eyes I just adjust the colour slightly by making the mix a bit pinker, or purple as the need arises.  Then with this new colour I can pick out areas of the face with similar colour and paint that in before moving on.  Using this method, you can maintain continuity of colour and tone and speed up the painting process.

9th Lesson - Greek Steps

Well, we finished off our cats (we all had different cats to paint).  The light is so strong and has strong shadows and highlights.  Do the highlights in a light orange to yellow colour first before dabbing on a bit of pure white for those final touches.  Remember that the shadows against a strong highlight tend to have more intense colour and are darker, then gradually lighten up away from the shadow.  Therefore, in this case, you have your highlight at the edge, then strong dark orange shadow, then a lighter less intense, purple-orange as you paint away from the edge.

Mull of Kintyre by Andrea M.

A beautiful painting by Andrea.  We were all pleased with our finished paintings of this lovely place!

8th Lesson - Greek Steps

Just to finish off the bougainvillea and give the painting some cooler colours, I have painted in the greens.  Add the dark greens first then give them highlights.  Some of the leaves can be completely in shadow, especially on the right-hand side, and others in light.  I added more greens to the pots and put more highlights on the plants around the steps.

Jo's Portrait

4th Lesson - Marylyn Maro

When painting a portrait, I like to begin with the eyes.  After painting in the whites with a slightly purple hue, I colour in the iris (in my case, a hazel colour) then the dark pupil, using a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Scarlet.  To set the eye into the socket, you need to deal with it in the same way as a ball - shadow around the edges of the white and up under the eyelid.  A lighter hazel colour can then be added onto the iris for highlights leaving a darker ring around the edge.  At this stage, I don't worry about eyelashes until after I have some flesh tones painted in.

For flesh tones, I am using a Scarlet, Cadmium Lemon and Pthalo Green with Ultramarine Blue added for any shadows.  Mix the Scarlet and Lemon first, slowly adding the Green, which is a very strong colour.  This is my base colour - by adding white, I have a highlight.  With the same base colour you can add the Ultramarine Blue and extra Scarlet for a rich shadow colour.  Once these three colours are mixed on the palette, I can work quickly over the whole face, using the base colour, highlights and shadows where needed.  Then I can go back into the face and start on detail.