Owl Always Look After You

This watercolor painting is a commission piece I did recently for my friend Sarah. She gave it to a friend for a baby shower gift. The painting is of an grandmother owl watching over the new baby owl while it’s sleeping. The painting ended up being 11×14 in size. It took a lot of planning out and hours of painting, but it turned out really well. If you are needing any custom or freelance work, please feel free to contact me!

 

Here is the process I used to create a painting like this.

Sketch phase- I used pencil and eraser to sketch out my initial thoughts on regular paper. I also had my friend approve this sketch before I moved forward to painting.

 

Watercolor pencil phase- I then used a light box to trace my existing drawing with watercolor pencil onto a heavier watercolor paper. I also start to figure out the colors I want to use throughout the painting.

1st coat of water- I then go over the whole painting with a coat of water. By doing this I water down the pencils I used and spread out the color where I need it. This becomes the 1st base coat of color in my watercolor layers.

2nd & 3rd wash of watercolor- Now I start applying more coats of watercolor to help define parts of the painting and also make the colors more vibrant. The neat part about watercolor is you get to keep building it up the texture from the brush strokes.

The final product- There are probably about 4-5 layers total of watercolor wash applied to make this end result. After the painting is finished I outline the whole thing with a black pen to enhance the details. Around the stars, I used yellow colored pencil to make the stars appear to be shining. At the bottom we decided on the quote “Owl always look after you Javier”. This is the finished product that was handed over to my friend.