A touch of Cerulean Blue is mixed with Titanium White in order to cool the color. We can then add a bits of snow that is resting on the branches. Since we want the background of the painting to appear further away from the owl, we'll leave out some of the details and focus mainly on color and value relationships to give the impression of distant trees rather than describing them completely. Darker trees produce additional contrast which makes them appear a little closer to the viewer. We'll continue layering additional tree trunks and branches over the background, gradually becoming slightly darker with the applications. As our trees began to emerge from the background, we can add highlights on the left side of the trunks with a mixture of Titanium White and Yellow Ochre. We can gradually begin to add a few loose tree trunks with a slightly darker mixture of Burnt Umber and Prussian Blue. Since we want the oranges and blues to be a little stronger we'll rely on warmness the Burnt Sienna to produce the natural oranges in the painting. We'll start with a thinned application of a mixture of Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. Use only a minimal amount of graphite for the sketch since some of the material may mix with your subsequent oil applications. For this demonstration, I began with a light sketch with an H graphite pencil.

You may begin your sketch directly with oils if you prefer. We'll begin with a simple contour sketch on the panel.

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Full snowy owl sketch sketch