I’ve long wanted to do a Great Horned Owl painting, since I drew up the list of birds of prey and put them on my To-Paint list. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of it at the very beginning. So this will pick up where I remembered to take the first pic. Here’s what I’ve got so far on it, and as I do more, I’ll update this post to show you the progress.
Great Horned Owl Painting-in-Progress
For a nice change in the order-of-ways-things-usually-work (usual for me, at least, though I’d be happy to change to a new norm of having them sold before I’m done!), I’ve already had an offer to buy this painting. The buyer asked me if I can make the perch a cedar branch, because that holds a special significance to her. So today I went out and took some pics of suitable cedar branches. I think I can modify it and turn the old oak into an old cedar. We’ll see. So the branch may be the next part I work on, and then go back to the owl body. I won’t be able to stop thinking about working on the branch so I might as well skip to it.
A Feathered Foot
I worked on the owl foot before moving onto the feathers, and after I changed the branch into cedar. The final result looks a little different than this, but this is close to what I ended up with. Feathered feet were a new thing for me!
The Original is sold
Finished it Saturday, Nov. 20. Now I’ll get it framed, with rock samples, and ship this off to the collector in Missouri! However, there are prints, notecards, and NFT available of this painting:
The Pigments
All of the pigments are foraged from right here at Wild Ozark. These are the sources: bone (white), soot (black), red sandstone, russet sandstone, shale, green sandstone, limonite (yellow stone), and what I think is bitumen. The bitumen makes a brown paint if I use it whole, and a nice black if I wash the pigment first.
If you are interested in a set of my paints for yourself, check out my online shop to see what’s available. I usually make extra when I make my own.
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Author/Artist Info
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Madison Woods is a self-taught artist who moved to the Ozarks from south Louisiana in 2005. In 2018 she began experimenting with watercolor painting, using her local pigments. She calls them Paleo Paints. Her paintings of the Ozark-inspired scenes feature exclusively the lightfast pigments foraged from Madison county, Arkansas. Her inspiration is nature – the beauty, and the inherent cycle of life and death, destruction and regeneration.
Her online portfolio is at www.PaleoPaints.com.
Click here to join her mailing list.