Contest Entry: Owl and Fragmented Starburst



Large Scale Fragmentation | Results Announced November 16

This week’s challenge will have you thinking larger than life! In celebration of Roostery’s bedding launch, we’re challenging you to create a large scale fragmentation design that would be the perfect addition to your bedroom decor. From deconstructed pops of color to fragments of dispersed light, bring your artwork to life but remember to think big! Entries will be previewed at the yard size: 42″ x 36”. Submissions close November 7  at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. Voting begins November 9. See official rules.

Owl and Fragmented Starburst


This is my entry for this week. The design basically covers a yard of fabric and the neat fragmented starburst goes almost to the edge of the design.  I decided to use a barred owl as my centerpiece, and the patterning is a bit simplified but mostly accurate. The eyes should be completely black in this type of owl, but I think it looks a little less scary with the big yellow irises.

Making this design took a few more steps than normal. I did the background drawing in pencil and went over it in pen before scanning it in.


Then I did my owl sketch, and grabbed a very dark 6B pencil without thinking that it wouldn't erase without smudging and leaving a big mess. 


So I tried to just scan in the pencil drawing, and work from that, but it really wasn't giving me a good quality image in the end. So I ended up printing it out and tracing over the copy with a marker and some tracing paper. The marker sometimes seeps through the thin paper and leaves marks so I used the copy to save the original from damage.


At this point I decided to just make the wings symmetrical on the computer so I only drew one wing. The rest of the work was done on the computer. The starburst took only minor tweaking, and still has the hand drawn lines. The owl needed a new wing and the feathers got doubled, flipped, and scattered around the owl. 



Then I added a background and another layer with my linen texture. It was originally going to be red, but the red and gold with the owl looked a little too much like it was trying to be a knock off of Harry Potter! So I changed it to teal before finally settling on purple. Here's the accidental Gryffindor version:


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