Hi friends!

Sometime very stranger images born into my head.
From them, then new drawings are obtained ... and even a series of drawings, if the idea captures me for a long time.
Once I came up with the Singing Forest, and I wanted to see what animals live there.
Probably they all love music?

Sketch in Paint Tool SAI 2

To create the characters, I looked at photographs of different breeds of owls and chose these birds.

For sketching, I usually use an Ink Pen with the appropriate settings.

Create a new layer, choose a regular brush with the following settings

The "Blending" parameter in this case is very important to make a soft gradient transition from color to color, even if they are contrasting, as in this case.
Also, the selected texture allows you to create a beautiful textured background.

Create three new layers, choose this brush for the tree

I paint it on one layer, and each of the owls is also on separate layers, but for them I use a brush called Oil Brist 2

At this stage of work, we get this picture.

At this stage, the sketch layer is no longer needed, so I turn off its visibility.
I continue to work on the silhouettes of owls using Oil Brist 2,

and at the same time I am looking for a color solution for the background that would suit me using the menu Filter - Color Adjustment - Hue / Saturation

I decided that the background was too saturated - it interferes with the perception of the main characters, while I returned everything back.

I draw the owls and add colored reflexes to their plumage.
For now, just general strokes to see how it will look.

Add some magic - on a new layer below the tree layer with Oil Brist 2 brush I paint a golden highlight.

To make the glow soft, I blur it with the Watercolor brush.

I detail the birds - I draw eyes, feathers, beaks, legs 

I paint feathers and reflexes with Oil Brist 2 brush, and for the eyes, beak, paws - what requires a clear drawing - I take the same Ink Pen

So, the general view is almost ready.

On this step I opened a drawing in Photoshop, made a copy of color background layer and set a blend mood "Overlay" for copy.
The picture became rich color and took on a dramatic aspect.

Then, to draw the music of the Singing Forest, I drew chains of brushes in the form of stars on a new layer (you can use ready-made chains, or you can adjust single stars).

And the notes themselves were created using  Custom Shapes tool

from the default set called "Music"

And I hang garlands on the branches

And a couple of finishing touches!
When all the notes are "hung" in their places, I combine them all into one layer, duplicate it and apply Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur command to the lower take. I choose the blur parameters to my taste.
Change the blending mode to Linear Dodge (Add), then make a duplicate of the blurred layer and set the blending mode for it to Linear light 
It turns out a very beautiful bright magical glow!

Some color correction and... here are the owls charmed by the singing trees!

This my drawing you can buy in full size in my digital store on Makers Place

Have a nice and creative day!

Regards

Cross-post from Hive, Whaleshares and translated from Golos