Abc Owl

I took a heavyweight piece of watercolour paper, it really is the best surface for these pens. I used a 3 sizes of lids to create the eye circles,(you could use a compass) and then freehanded the curved lines of the body. These are very simple shapes but if you are concerned about them then use a French Curve to get a neat line. I filled in the whole of the owl with 'letters' using a childrens chunky alphabet stencil. i then outlined everything with a black fineliner
Now just have fun colouring in the letters. You can see that I only used upper case, and I overlapped many of them to create depth. I added a few loose letters outside the owl and some simple leaf shapes. I used Aquamarkers by Letraset, but any water based markers will do.
While the ink was drying on the letters I added some interest to the background. I took a honeycomb stamp and scribbled my blue aquamarker over it, then simply stamped with it. To avoid stamping over the letters I laid scraps of paper over them for protection.
I took a slightly darker shade of each colour and used it to outline the letters, I felt this was enough to make them stand out without outlining them all in black, which may have been too harsh. At this point it needed a little something more, so I added a small scallop pattern to the black lines of the owl, the letters 'outside' the owl and the branch/leaves.
Finally I added a border just using a ruler and the broader aquamarker nib.