Owl (painting process)

#62

Hey people .... here's a painting of an owl, practicing textures and foliage, check out the step by step process below.
I start with the darkest areas or contours to establish the base and then just fill in the shading. This way it's easier to quickly get the proportions and basic shading in. Painting is more about abstracting what you see and I found this to be the best method for me to see shapes and forms and indicate them easily.

The process with color is pretty much the same as for the value paintings, except there's also hue and saturation to worry about on top of value(brightness). I look for the darker silhouettes of color and indicate those first ... but try to group areas where I can, in order to avoid unnecessary detailing in the beginning. So if there are colors that kinda merge into one, I'll just approximate a general color for that particular area. Here's the final, what do you guys think?