Experiment: Owl box
While I'm quite busy with several assignments I manage to make some time for special projects for myself too! In this case it's making a tiny painting on a small box. For my birthday I got a gift voucher from dear friends, it was for a tiny shop with all kinds of craft supplies. There I found wonderful boxes made of some kind of dark paper and bought one. I had it standing on my desk for quite some time because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it. But then I had it! I decided to paint an owl on it. I made an illustration of a cool one some time ago (even if I say so myself) and decided to try to get it on. The drawing was quite big (A4 size) and the box was only 10x10cm. So I downsized the whole thing and got it on the box. I still have this old fashioned way of doing so; I have the drawing I want on a piece of paper, then I make the back of the paper grey with soft pencil. I put it on the box and then I retrace the lines with a fineline hard pencil so that the pencil from the back will be pushed onto the box!
Time to start painting! I got all my painting gear out of the closet, wiped the dust off and got going. Just as in school I put on all the colors I had on small glass plates. After finishing the first strokes I already realized that that was a total waste of paint. You don't use all the colors and even the ones you do use dry up before you get to them.. Anyways, back to the painting. I took some pics during the process to show you how it went. Did you know how hard it is to get a bright orange onto a dirty paper color?
When the owl was finished I felt there was something missing, on the original drawing there was an hourglass under the owl. There is obviously no place for an hourglass on this box, so I decided I would put the owl on a branch.
When the branch was finished it looked quite dark, the whole picture I mean. At first I drew some flowers for in the tree, but it just didn't seem right. In the end I decided to just put buds in it, which gave it just the right amount of 'brightness' I wanted.
As I gave it a place in my sewing drawer my cat couldn't stay away.. as usual! Now I only have to find something to put into it!
