Family of Owls

This most recent project was such a fun one for me to do.  It all started last fall when I was wandering the aisles of Hobby Lobby.  I didn't have anything specific I was shopping for, just looking at the wonderful crafting supplies that they had and seeing if anything caught my eye.  As I was walking down the wood aisle these cute little wooden owls just begged me to take them home.  Could you resist this cuteness??

No, I didn't think so.  I had to buy them and bring them home.  But what next?  I didn't have any definite plans for them.  I saw them every few days as I was organizing and putting craft supplies away in my drawer organizer.  Then one day I finally had an idea of how I wanted to use them.  Let me remind you, this was back in October.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but it took me this long to actually put my thoughts into action.

First I looked on Pinterest and Google Images for tree branches that I could print out and copy onto my piece of wood.  With all those 1,000's of images, there wasn't one certain one that I wanted to use.  So I decided to just start a sketch on paper of what I wanted my portion of a tree to look like.  Since I'm not a fantastic freehand artist, this was a great undertaking for me.  This is what I came up with.

Next I hand sketched this onto my 12 x 12 piece of wood.  I made a few changes from the original sketch.  I added a portion of tree trunk (that was always my plan, but there wasn't room for it on my paper sketch) and changed the position of some of the branches.

My next step was painting the tree and background.  I painted the tree in first, then went back and added the sky color for the background.  If I was using a single color for the sky, it would not have been a problem.  I used three different blues and a white also to make my sky color so it was a bit hard to paint around the branches because I had to change from one size brush to another and the tone of the sky color differed.  If I do this project again I am going to paint the background first, then sketch the tree and branches on it.  I think that will make a more even background.  This is a project that I am going to keep though, so since my family likes it, I'm okay with how it turned out. 

Next was the fun part.  I had specific ideas of what I wanted the owls to look like.  I wanted the owls to represent my family, so we have two adult owls and two little owls.

It is hard to see in the picture above, but the purple one is painted in an ombre technique and actually looks really cute.  The orange-fiery one turned out to be my favorite.

I used Mod Podge to attach the owls to the painting.  I was worried that they would not stay attached, but 2 weeks later there aren't any problems.  All I have to do is find a frame that I like for it.  Here is my little family of owls.

Are you interested in having a family of owls for yourself?  Send me an email or message me on my Facebook page.