I started a motif challenge with pictorial motifs,
chose an illustration, and made a rough draft of it, and a second draft. 
I haven’t explained what I’m using for the beak right now – It’s a stitch I found in Japanese Knitting Symbols Translated that my Mother in law gave me for my birthday two birthdays ago.
Only I was working from memory and did a variation by mistake, so probably my symbol would have a 5 in it, not a 3? I work it at the top diamond mark into the stitch in the lower diamond mark. * With yarn in back, insert the right needle into the marked lower stitch from the front of the fabric, draw up a (long, loose) stitch. Yarn over (not tightly). Repeat from * Draw up one more stitch from the front. Drop the next stitch from the left needle, allowing the stitches to ladder down inside of the 5 extended drawn up stitches to the lower marked stitch. Turn. P5. Turn. Slip 3, knit 2 together, pass slipped stitches over.
Another detail that I didn’t explain is how to make a 4/1crossing without bunching up the fabric. A year ago I didn’t know how to do it at all, so I wrote to Lucy Hague about it, because her gorgeous Celtic shawls are nearly horizontal in their crossings, and there is no bunching. She explained to me that she makes an extended loop stitch by wrapping the yarn a few extra times around the needle on large crossings, then treats it as one loop on the following row or round. While I’m gushing about Ms Hague, whom I’ve never met in person, she answered my question while she was on on the road touring with her band, and she gifted me one of her patterns to give me an example of how to explain and chart the technique!
Back to the owl. I think I liked the head on the first draft better. And the bottom of the wings is not quite there yet. And I think it may be time to bring out Vikel Braids for the perch.
When the iterations seem unending – I get excited about other projects. I haven’t decided which technique to try next, intarsia is probably the easiest though I’m not sure I have enough compatible colors in my stash, I’ll probably have to double up on smaller yarns: Continuous cables could be next, I only need one color of yarn, but adding all the no stitch spots for circular cables feels intimidating, and I really need to think about lace. I might start with the head in the round, then add the body and background onto it. I made a peacock face cloth once that followed that construction method. I could never bring myself to wash my face with it, so I gave it to my friend Elisabeth. She gave it to her son, and it became one of his stuffed animals, loved so much I had to repair it.