I've been wanting to paint owls for a while and when I found out the Ohio Bird Sanctuary was giving a lecture on owls featuring live owls (out of their cages!)-- I grabbed a camera and drove south to Mansfield. Don't be surprised if you see more paintings of owls and birds of prey!
Side note: I think the patterned backgrounds I've done in the past really helped me "translate" the landscape background here... to stay back! I find landscape painting very difficult (and greatly admire artists who can do it!) Painting it as a background was not so hard... Really happy with this one.