If you like decorating eggs for Easter, this craft tutorial will show you how to paint eggs as a couple of cute owls!
I’m hardly a big owl fan, but somehow owls keep sneaking into my art again and again. When I attempt to explain it to myself, I think that owls simply have a talent for looking good in any form and shape.
An Easter egg, for instance – its round, curvy form just begs for an owl to be painted on it!
I created the design for a brown saw-whet owl a couple of years ago when I wanted to make an Easter gift for an aunt who is a big owl fan (hello, Auntie Ruby!). That year, I painted a few wooden eggs for friends and family, but the owl was my favourite.
Later, I started selling copies of it in my Etsy shop. I no longer do that, but over a couple of years, I painted about ten owl eggs and sent them as far as Australia. I still like painting them occasionally as 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.
Materials for Painting Owl Easter Eggs
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– tempera
– varnish
How to Paint an Owl Easter Egg
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 use 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?
And I still love my owl! :-) The snowy owl is certainly nice too. A friend just recently gave me a lovely stuffed snowy owl. I always love your art work and blogs.
A fun site