If you like decorating eggs for Easter, this craft tutorial will show you how to paint eggs as a couple of cute owls!

I am not what you would call “a big owl fan”. If I ever felt connection with any animals, that would be foxes. But somehow owls keep sneaking into my art again and again, while you would hardly ever see me painting foxes. When I try to explain it to myself, I decide that owls simply possess a talent of looking so good in any form and shape! An Easter egg, for instance – in its round curvy form, it just asks for an owl to be painted on it. Wouldn’t you say so?

Materials for Painting Owl Easter Eggs

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– wooden eggs

– tempera, gouache or acrylic paints

– varnish if you use gouache or tempera

Tutorial

I created the design for a brown saw whet owl a couple of years ago when I wanted to make an Easter gift for our aunt who is an owl lover (hello, Auntie Ruby!). That year, I painted wooden eggs for a few of our relatives, but the owl was probably my favourite. Later, I started selling copies of it in my Etsy shop. I painted about ten owl eggs and sent them as far as Australia, before deciding to take them down. But I still like painting them for gifts! Easter is coming again, and I know one little girl who loves owls.

I have never painted a snowy owl egg before, but I wanted to try something new and create a buddy for the brown owl.

1. Paint the wooden eggs with solid colours. Dark-brown and white for these two owls.

2. With a pencil, mark where you want to paint their eyes and beaks. You can also mark their bellies, wings and tails.

3. Paint the eyes. Try to create a gradated effect with a darker colour at the top.

4. Paint or draw the pupils of the eyes. You can use a thin brush and diluted black paint to make the outlines of the eyes, or an ink pen. I love my Sakura ink pens, but at that moment I actually felt too lazy to go and look for them, so I only used paints on these owls.

5. Paint the beaks. Yellow and black with a streak of diluted white paint for a highlight.

6. I would say that painting the eyes took about 50% of my time. The rest was done with quick brush strokes. I used a mix of white, blue and black to mark the shadows around the eyes of the snowy owl. Black strokes were supposed to suggest the texture of its feathers. For the brown owl’s feathers I used a mix of reddish brown with white.

7. I always leave my favourite part for last. A couple of dots of white to mark highlights in the eyes!

8. If you used acrylics, you don’t need to do anything anymore. But tempera and gouache have to be sealed with varnish. It will protect them against moisture and dust.

More Eggs?

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