Friday - Archived Works Day!

 

"Autumn Migration, Red-tail Hawks" 

pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison 

(from a South Dakota private collection)

 

Here's the second posting for "Archived Works Friday”...OK, I realize its Saturday but did post on a couple other social media platforms and forgot (!) my blog!!! This time its a pencil drawing from 35 years ago. As I mentioned before - I'll post a painting, drawing or serigraph (silkscreen print) from the "archive" files of years past...and give a little back story on the work. I hope you'll find it interesting!

 

I had a long, long relationship of just plain awe and admiration for birds of prey...I built my first (and last) “mew” when I was 12 years old, behind the garage in the back yard. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews_(falconry) My first sidewalk “art fair” drawings were birds of prey, also at age 12. I spent too much time in the timber searching out hawk nests and never grew tired of lying on my back on a hillside along the Lizard Creek valley watching birds of prey soaring on a thermal or migrating through in the fall or spring. While doing so, I did try and squeeze in some experiments with bal-chatri, or "hair umbrella", an old East Indian idea – I carried a small home made one and a “volunteer” English Sparrow (House Sparrow) around in it on my long hikes to watch hawks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-chatri) I also devoured “The Falconer's Handbook” by Howard Smith, as nightly reading before bed...

 

I always had trouble drawing things that didn't hold still for extended periods of time (that just wasn't my gift)...Audubon worked from skins that he and his parties “shot” - I couldn't do that! (Didn't want to anyway!). I saved money from my Des Moines Register paper route and eventually got a camera and lenses to get pictures of the birds to draw from...this was in 1962...I'll save more of that for another post.

 

The posted drawing here was probably my first “serious” try for drawing hawks (Red-tails in this example)...I never forgot those carefree days idling on the hillside gazing up and this drawing was prompted by those memories. And although the scenery was very similar, I drew directly from the hillsides and valleys I became familiar with after moving back to NW Iowa, where we've lived for many years now. Hillsides and valleys along the Little Sioux River just south of our studio a few miles.

 

Now we can enjoy the same sort of view here off the studio deck, or a park bench on one of the hillside pastures...full circle? I haven't indulged in pencil (graphite) for a few years, but still admire a good pencil rendering when I see one!

 

(This drawing and other archived artwork can be viewed at - https://morrisons-studio.com/archived-works/)