Hi there, MX2! I wanted to reach out and celebrate your imagination and invention! I love the way that you experimented with envisioning the owl as both a kind, older woman in a shawl, and, later, based on the forms of the head, an astronaut! An astronaut owl is an amazing, wonderful idea! Let your mind wander and follow these paths to help you create. My brain rarely works in a straight line, and it bounces from one connection to another just like yours. This is a normal part of creativity, and it sounds like you've got the process down well! Quantity leads to quality - the more ideas you pump out, the more likely you'll hit on a winner, like the astronaut owl or the woman in the shawl. Then, you can pick which idea you like best to develop as a drawing. Keep it up! Also, don't worry about being messy, as long it doesn't mix you up and confuse you from identifying the shapes and forms of the characters. Think of it like going to eat at your favorite restaurant. Let's say you're getting some pizza, and it comes out looking scrumptious! However, you don't see all the shredded cheese on the floor of the kitchen, the tomato sauce all over the cook's apron, and the dough dust coating everything in sight! You are cooking up a drawing, so messes are bound to happen along the way as you explore new ideas, shapes, and lines. You can always clean it up later by putting another paper over the first and cleaning up the lines. Having a light box really helps with this technique if you're working traditionally. That way, you can make your drawing polished and clean and ready to serve the viewer! I can also see you have taken a first, giant leap as an artist! I think you have the right idea to learn more about the bird's anatomy to help you grow, and there are plenty of great books that can help. One I like is David Sibley's Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. This volume is entirely illustrated by the author, so it give you plenty of accurate reference material, including some generalized examples of bird anatomy in the first few pages. However, before diving into the anatomy, my recommendation is to work on training your brain to understand 3D forms and perspective. It's a serious challenge I have been wrestling with myself for years now, but this foundation in perspective basics is an important milestone before attempting anatomy. I know spheres and cones and cylinders and boxes can be boring, but they are the foundation for even greater things to come! One way to study is to practice from actual boxes around your home, or you can use a 3D program and spin the forms around to different angles. Pay attention to how the angles of the box change from different viewpoints as you draw, and draw hundreds of them or more. This practice is something that can never be done enough, even as you become more experienced as an artist. Unfortunately, I have found these exercises are not enough, especially if you are interested laying out complex, believable scenes involving organic characters like people and animals in perspective, but they are a great start. Feed that imagination with forms, and who knows how far into the stars you'll reach!

Awesome

Cute!

These are all the process drawings that got me to the point where I could draw the above owls without looking at a reference. I also took a detour into imagining humanoid owls with arms for some reason.

He’s great!

Perfect!

Nice! Cute cat :)

The combination of facial expression and the posture in picture 3 is really cute!

So cute!

I like this frog