I didn't have a pushchair to take the weight.

There are some birds that demand attention. The Snowy Owl is one of those birds- a myth blown in by the north wind. As it perched up on a fencepost it constantly shifted it's gaze from side to side, a look of disdain in it's catlike eyes. There was a weight to this bird, despite the lightness inherent in it's thermal plumage.

The constant turning of its head made it difficult to sketch in detail- the subtle changes in shape of eye and pout and facial disc were hard to describe in pencil alone, and I left the bird with a sense of frustration. I hadn't captured it- or at least I had grabbed and been left with only a handful of downy feathers.

I have painted a few owls before, and I wanted to make a start on this one before the memory of it faded too much. There is nothing like an owls head to test one's ability to carve out a complex shape in paint. There are intuitions to overcome. If an owl faces you head on, you expect to see both eyes clearly- but it doesn't take much of a change in angle to obscure the further eye, as the feathers surrounding the bill jut forward. An owl's face is not a flat plane, and in dull light it can be hard to make out any structure. There were subtle warm ochreous shadows around the eyes, and this was something I focused on to find the character of the bird.

Once happy enough that I'd got the basic shape of the head, I worked on the rest of the body, using photos as a guide to get the pattern of bars and wedges and drops as close as possible to the real thing.

The dilemma now was how to proceed. I needed to paint the white of the feathers, without losing the pattern I'd just marked out. Leaving the paint to dry for a while, I guessed that a thin layer over the top would cover, but not entirely obscure the dark pattern, and I was right, but perhaps a little hasty. The dark bars had not dried completely, and as I dragged the brush over the canvas, some of the dark paint was dragged out with the white. I decided to continue- feeling that the streaking effect would help add to the texture of the feathers.

I really will have to wait now for the paint to dry before I continue, in order to refine the pure white feather base colour.