Night Owls illustration

One of the things I love about art, whether it's drawing, painting, sewing, or quilting, is that inspiration can just strike you out of the blue at any time.  I love that moment when a little idea begins to tickles you from the corner of your consciousness, and you have to get it down before you forget it.  That's why I try to keep a sketch book with me all the time.

I love the idea of a mother owl with her babies. I sketched this out with an idea of the type of owl that I was drawing, but I didn't know what it was called.  After a bit of research, I found out that the owl I was imagining was a great horned owl (which makes sense because we had one living in the palms in our back yard when I was a kid).

I sketched up a rough idea for this little owl family a few weeks ago.  I wasn't sure that I was going to do a full blow illustration from my original idea until my 6-year-old son saw the drawing and wanted to know which owl was him.  He's such a smart little guy, and he somehow knew that I was thinking about my three kids when I sketched this out.  I'm always finding inspiration in my family.  My kids inspire me every day with the crazy stuff they do :)

Here's my original sketch.  I know that it's really rough, but I just want to show you that I don't concern myself with drawing a pristine image right from the start. I redrew the image until I was satisfied with my final drawing and then scanned and colored it in photoshop.  

I'm thinking about printing this drawing out on some fabric to make a pillow for my daughter's room in the near future.  I'll keep you posted on that as soon as I figure out how I'm going to get the image from my computer onto a piece of fabric :)

In other news, I just want to say how excited I am about the sew mama sew giveaway day on the 9th!!!!!  I'm going to have two giveaways (maybe three; we'll see), and I'm definitely going to check out all the other giveaways too!  So, make sure you come back on the week of the 9th to sign up, and let me know if you'll be hosting a giveaway on your blog too so that I can visit as well.