[Mottles]

Wonderful looking owl Paul and placement will be great. Looking forward to following along as you progress. I hope you'll share images of the house when it's finished.
Kathy

[MelNM]

He's looking good Paul, I'm not too sure the mice think the same
Mel

[GILLY]

Looking good so far, can't wait to see thr finished owl.

[squbrigg]

Great job Paul, can't wait to see the next steps. Sounds like a great plan you have, looking forward to the finished piece in the setting.

Bob

[jax]

Good carving Paul, looking forward to seeing the completed "Current Resident".

Jax.

[RobJ]

Very nice Owl. I am sure he will be a complete success. I like the idea of situating him in a (window) to frame him.

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Do you have a site Paul? I would like to see more of your birds! And....where do you get the roughouts?

[Paul_Guraedy]

One step forward and two back. I sure am tired of plucking feathers on this barn owl!

Several weeks ago I was carving on this piece and my wife, Diana, heard me protest, "Why in the......world would an owl have a tail that is shorter than the wings?" Carve it down to the proper length.

Then a week ago she heard, "The feathers on that wing sure look more like those of a hawk! Carve out the offending feathers and reshape the wings.

Then yesterday she was out on the carving porch with me and heard me exclaim, "Barn owls have cleavage!" This called for some explanation...these owls have legs that reach almost to the throat. Carve out all of those feathers that I had taken so long to put in.

My friends, it does not do a lot of good to have many references if you are not using them. I had been carving this owl from basically one book, even though I have about 30 photos downloaded from the internet and about that many from other sources. My owl was the representative of one bird. Although anatomically correct, it was not typical.

When the house is finished, my next project will be to build a large bulletin board over my carving area. I will post all the pictures I can of the current subject where I will have to refer to them constantly as I carve.

Hi Ho, I had not noticed your posting until I revisited this thread. Sorry 'bout dat!

My son, a software engineer, has generously offered to assist me in using part of his website. You can find it at

www.guraedy.com

then click on Paul and Diana.

I have not posted very many carvings as I am a late comer to the world of digital cameras. In the ealry years of my carving efforts, I did not really want to record my feeble attempts. Fell into the habit of not doing photography....... before the wonderful acquisition of a digital camera.

I have found that most instructors have more roughouts than they need for whatever course they are teaching. I get them when I am at a seminar, when friends are taking classes and have even gotten them by mail when I am particularly interested in that species. Watch the upcoming events in the carving magazines for potential roughouts. Generally, the legs, wings and tail receive minimal detailing when a roughout is used for a class. This makes it fairly easy to "re do" them to whatever you might want. Heads are problematic and usually are left as roughed out. It does provide a quick source of getting down to the bird and still doing a lot of improvising.

[GILLY]

Paul, the best thing about the digital camera is that you can take as many photos as you want without the hassle of waiting for the film to come back to see what you shot. The one thing that I would amybe think about is some photo software. I use Photoshop Elements, you can manipulate your photos to be as creatiive as you want and it is reasonably inexpensive.

Plus you can take a hundred practice photos and delete what ever you don't want.

My two cents

[GeorgiaCarver]

Love the pictures in the photo gallery especially the relief carving of the two eagles. Nice work.