EDIT I've received two notes so far asking me if this is a photograph. NO this is NOT a photograph. This is a digital art piece done entirely in Photoshop 7, with a mouse and a 8"x6" wacom tablet and stylus. I did look at a photo of an owl for reference for color and anatomy, but it was not copied, it was not photomaniped. ALL of my birds are done entirely from scratch in photoshop. Same thing with the wood texture underneath the owl. end edit

Well, at least I got something accomplished on my spring break. My last owl in the grey background series, the great horned owl.

I've got some serious hand cramps, so I'm gonna go work on my comic now... maybe go get a hair cut, hmmm..

edit I used color jitter in the brush tool a LOT for this one, and I also used the burn and dodge tools quite a bit more than I normally would on both the owl and the wood.

And uhm, incidentally, greathorned owls are fairly largish birds (somehow, they don't seem like birds to me.. more like.. flying mammals, but I know they're not. They've just got a more "human" personality than other birds I watch) so he's sitting on a larger fallen tree trunk..not some flimsy tree branch. It would be embarressing to him, I think, to sit on something that would break under his weight.