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How to create an "Owl Character".
The Owl sketch below has a size around 660x630px and resolution of 300px/inch. This may be important because of brushes sizes and layer style effects for the eyes and beak.
Create pretty simple/rough sketch of the bird. Use translucent round brush or brush "40px" from Hair/Fur brushes set. Actually the sketch may be much simpler than the example below. You have to create bird silhouette with the dark and light spots. I've used Photoshop CS5 and intuos 4 to make this character but it's possible to get absolutely the same result with the older versions of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and using a different drawing tablet device.
Make created bird image smoother. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, apply ~5 or 6px. Then increase contrast of owl "face" areas. Make the areas next to eyes and beak darker using round Brush Tool.
Learn how to create the Owl's eyes.
Choose "Ellipse Tool" and create the circle for the bottom "eye" layer. We'll use this shape to create dark contour around eye (eyelid).
Duplicate circle layer 2 times. Transform second duplicate to make it a little smaller. We need this layer to make iris shape (yellow area of the eye).
Transform 3-rd duplicate as well. Make it 40-50% smaller. We will use it to make a pupil (dark circle).
Download Owls eyes styles and apply them to the circles layers to get similar effect:
Then add two small white circles above the eyes layers to create reflection effect.
Now you can merge all eye layers.
Duplicate merged layer to create second eye.
You may create some elements without good painting skills. Draw basic flat shapes of the beak with the Brush Tool or Pen Tool. Create each element in a separate layer.
Download Beak styles and apply them to beak elements:
Then you may merge beak shapes into the one layer. Process created beak shape by using translucent brush. Add some color reflections and make beak surface smoother.
Use very similar way to draw the legs. First, make very simple basic shapes with the gradient.
Then apply bird skin texture with the translucent/round/small size brush.
Skin texture was created by putting translucent spots of brown/pink/yellow shades.
Add nails.
I applied default "Bevel and Emboss" layer style effect to them (5px size &softness). Also I processed them a bit with the soft translucent brush.
Merge all leg layers.
Duplicate the merged leg shape, go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal to create the second leg.
Download Hair/Fur brushes to create feathery texture for the owl body.
There are two ways to make feathery effect - by using brushes with the settings from screen shot below or by using "Smudge Tool". Try both of them to find out which one works better for you, also you may combine these techniques. I'll describe Smudge Tool option in the next step.
To work with the "Smudge Tool", set "Strength" between 80-100% (bigger amount makes hair longer).
Make active blurred owl body layer and try to draw out hairs by following errors directions from screen shot below:
In order to make long lock of hair choose smallest hair brush and use bigger Strength(90-100%) amount.
Merge Owl body layer with the eyes and beak, then draw out some hairs above the eyes and beak.
Place the photo of the egg or create your own egg shapewith the Pen Tool.
Apply Egg style to it. Erase legs areas from the egg.
Merge legs layers with the owl body. Then process legs joints areas using Smudge Tool.
And here is the result!
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