With this drawing, I was trying to accomplish a full value range with pencil, and I think I succeeded. There are areas that are the original white of the paper, and with a 6B soft lead I was able to get really dark darks. The hardest part was not smudging the drawing as I worked on it. I didn’t want to use fixative until the very end.
I wish I could have gotten the stars brighter, but erasing such small bits through such darks proved quite tricky. I suppose if I felt really strongly about it, I could brighten a few of them with a white Posca pen. But I’m not going to do that yet. I may add some transparent washes of color, and if I do that, then I could brighten a few stars. The painting—if it happens—will be tricky because I won’t want to lose the subtle shading of the pencil. So I’ll have to use very light, transparent washes.
Anyway, about the intentional errors. The highlights on the owl are all wrong. I don’t think there would be any! She’s facing away from the light source—the moon—and so would be all in deep shadow (except maybe for a thin halo of bright around her edges) unless there were a secondary light source in front of her.
But without highlights, the eyes would be so dull and her form would be so flat. So, after checking that my artistic license hasn’t yet expired, I ignored reality! But that’s the fun of art, and I did have fun with this one.
It would be fun to do a similar owl portrait with fully leafed out mid-summer trees. I was thinking that a summer piece would require a different kind of owl, one that lives in temperate climates. Although snowy owls are found in the mid latitudes of the US during winter, they live above the arctic circle during summer, nowhere near any deciduous trees. I can hear you reminding of me of my artistic license, but it feels like a bit too much. There’s probably a relatively light colored owl I could use, however. A barn owl comes to mind. Oh, the shiny objects!
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