I've been busy this week painting a Barn Owl that's been perched unfinished on a canvas for the last couple of years. A friend of mine saw it and said she'd like it if I ever got round to completing it, and now the weather has turned nasty and I've got space in the studio, the last few days have seen a bit of progress. It's been hard work to get the right shape, as the painting started with a simple idea that was born from imagination rather than any actual sketches or proper reference. The proportions were all wrong, but there was something about the eyes that pleased me, and I felt it was important to keep the facial expression. As I shaped the bird with successive layers of acrylic, the picture got better- then worse and - hopefully better again, as each element had an effect on it's surroundings. Even very subtle changes had drastic consequences on the form as a whole, and at times it's felt like cat- herding, once one's in place, another runs off and has to be recaptured. Hopefully all the cats are in the box now, but I'm going to have to keep my eye on it for a few days to make sure they don't escape.
