@daring-celt 31 January 2022

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...