Time-lapse: the surreal encounter between two owls
Warning: the video contains some flashing lights. Do not watch if you have epilepsy.
In the New World West,
with its prairies full with mounds,
She governs the gates to the undergrounds
where She laid Her nest:
as the Sun raises cluelessly,
She raises majestically.In the Ancient Near East,
where the Sun already fled and hid,
She who rules over the Levantine arid,
where even the pharaohs become Her feast:
nothing escapes Her grips
as She raises to Her highest trips.A meeting of the two is unlikely to be seen:
not just because of the ocean in-between,
but also the desert and the greens:
two thrones for two Owl-Queens.
Took me 3 and a half hours for me to draw this artistic attempt at putting two overly-specific (and largely disparate) owls species (with which I’ve been hyper-fixated lately) together within the same, surreal scene: Athene cunicularia (burrowing-owl) and Bubo ascalaphus (Pharaoh eagle-owl).
I guess it’s so far the most complex art whose time-lapse I managed to record (luckily, my phone didn’t crash during the drawing).
Alt-text for the final art (to be posted as a reply):
Artistic depiction of two owls unusually sitting at different simultaneous biomes while facing each other.
The leftmost A. cunicularia stands next to the entrance of a burrow. She is seen in profile, turned rightwards as she looks at the Pharaoh eagle-owl with a scheming and defiant expression.
The rightmost B. ascalaphus is perched on a boulder roughly at the same distance from the viewer (so the disparate sizes is evident). She’s also seen in profile, but turned leftwards, as she looks at the burrowing-owl with a purposefully ambiguous expression (open mouth as if screeching, body slightly leaned forwards with ruffled plumage, visibly hard grip onto the surface of the boulder, wide but half-closed eyes, traits that can be either a defense-attack, dominance pose; or simply the clumsy attempt from an innately strong owl to greet a smaller owl).
The leftmost biome is dominated by grass and other vegetation alongside the burrow, all covered in shadows by dense trees at the horizon. The rightmost is an open, plain desert, with some scattered pebbles and rocks, alongside the boulder where the Pharaoh eagle-owl is perched. The biomes meet almost seamlessly, with a somewhat gradual transition between grass and sand.
The dusk sky is dominated by a large, red crescent Moon, while the Sun is barely visible setting below the horizon.
Alt-text for the time-lapse:
A time-lapse disclosing the drawing processes behind the aforementioned art: from a black canvas to the initial landscape, with the multiplication of the layers containing the pebbles, then the Moon, then the approximated rotoscoping of two real photos of both owls, then a few final touches for texture and shading.