Digital art_2020. Blue Owls in the Singing Forest

Hi friends!

Sometime very stranger images born into my head.
From them, then new drawings are obtained ... and even a series of drawings, if the idea captures me for a long time.
Once I came up with the Singing Forest, and I wanted to see what animals live there.
Probably they all love music?

Sketch in Paint Tool SAI 2

To create the characters, I looked at photographs of different breeds of owls and chose these birds.

For sketching, I usually use an Ink Pen with the appropriate settings.

Create a new layer, choose a regular brush with the following settings

The "Blending" parameter in this case is very important to make a soft gradient transition from color to color, even if they are contrasting, as in this case.
Also, the selected texture allows you to create a beautiful textured background.

Create three new layers, choose this brush for the tree

I paint it on one layer, and each of the owls is also on separate layers, but for them I use a brush called Oil Brist 2

At this stage of work, we get this picture.

At this stage, the sketch layer is no longer needed, so I turn off its visibility.
I continue to work on the silhouettes of owls using Oil Brist 2,

and at the same time I am looking for a color solution for the background that would suit me using the menu Filter - Color Adjustment - Hue / Saturation

I decided that the background was too saturated - it interferes with the perception of the main characters, while I returned everything back.

I draw the owls and add colored reflexes to their plumage.
For now, just general strokes to see how it will look.

Add some magic - on a new layer below the tree layer with Oil Brist 2 brush I paint a golden highlight.

To make the glow soft, I blur it with the Watercolor brush.

I detail the birds - I draw eyes, feathers, beaks, legs 

I paint feathers and reflexes with Oil Brist 2 brush, and for the eyes, beak, paws - what requires a clear drawing - I take the same Ink Pen

So, the general view is almost ready.

On this step I opened a drawing in Photoshop, made a copy of color background layer and set a blend mood "Overlay" for copy.
The picture became rich color and took on a dramatic aspect.

Then, to draw the music of the Singing Forest, I drew chains of brushes in the form of stars on a new layer (you can use ready-made chains, or you can adjust single stars).

And the notes themselves were created using  Custom Shapes tool

from the default set called "Music"

And I hang garlands on the branches

And a couple of finishing touches!
When all the notes are "hung" in their places, I combine them all into one layer, duplicate it and apply Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur command to the lower take. I choose the blur parameters to my taste.
Change the blending mode to Linear Dodge (Add), then make a duplicate of the blurred layer and set the blending mode for it to Linear light 
It turns out a very beautiful bright magical glow!

Some color correction and... here are the owls charmed by the singing trees!

I hope you'll like my another magic drawing story!

With Love...