Breaking Out

"September Dawn, Little Sioux River"

12X16" oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 
SOLD

Time to bust outta this place!  The "studio" I mean!  Been working on all sorts of things a person must, but the prairie, birds and the landscape in general are shouting at me out the windows surrounding my chair and I need to start focusing out there!

The last piece I just finished up this afternoon is actually from a plein air study I did not too terribly far from the studio about 3 years back.  The piece was started outside on the site, but had to be finished that day in the studio because the conditions changed so quickly.  The study can be seen here (below) and can be read about from that original blog from September 17, 2009 - http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com/2009/09/summer-still.html

 The original plein air study

"September Dawn, Little Sioux River"
Oil on mounted canvas - 6X8"

(click on image for a larger view)

Plein air studies are a natural step for a painter...first you do small color studies (paintings) on location, and these serve as guides for further work in a larger "finished" painting - done later in the studio.

I sold the original plein air study of this painting just a couple months after I did it in 2009 so I had to work from an image file I scanned of the original 6X8" plein air study.  That still worked just fine...I wasn't trying to laboriously duplicate the small original, but instead work off of the "impression" the original piece offered as far as lighting, color and composition.  The finished piece is unmistakably done from the original, yet is more refined to reflect my interpretation of that morning...the fog or haze rising off of the river as the early morning, late summer sun, breaks through the atmosphere upstream.

I'm spending what time the Good Lord is granting me, celebrating the landscape surrounding our valley and area of the tallgrass prairie here...celebrating in my paintings, drawings and photography - but its high time to break out of here and get into the summer outside!

Hope you can get out and enjoy this summer!