Sorry, am I boring you?

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The eyes of the Great Horned Owl are such an intense colour I actually had to tone them down is this painting to stop it looking fake!

It's impossible not to love Pygmy Owls. Not much bigger than a sparrow, they are tiny balls of attitude ready to take on prey that often seems ridiculously ambitious. In reality the bird pictured here was actually perched on my finger at a local bird rehab, shortly before his successful return to the wild.

Great Grey Owls are so incredibly well camouflaged they often appear as just a pair of intense looking eyes in the forest.

We stopped by the Alberta Raptor Centre on our road trip across Canada, where they have a fantastic captive breeding program for the burrowing owl. I loved their range of expressions and stilt like legs. The composition was inspired by some references I saw of young owls in low cover outside the burrow.

Although my reference pictures were taken in the bright sunlight of a Senora Dessert morning, I wanted to play with using moonlight to better set the scene for this fantastic owl.