Painting?

First time I've painted since college. Don't ask me how long that's been. :) This was supposed to be the eyes of an owl. I view it as a great learning experience. I made a lot of bad decisions and a few good ones. Hopefully I can learn from the bad ones and not repeat them the next time. In hindsight I wish I had of worked on a larger board so I could have framed the image a bit wider and had the owl's "horns" break the top of the framing. I think that would have looked better and sold it more as an owl. This is definitely one of those cases where the process revealed more than the work itself.