Finally...

"Summer Along Angler's Bay"

color pencil - 5X7" - art work © Bruce A. Morrison
(SOLD - in a private collection)

(click on image for larger view)

Studio time is getting shorter and harder to accommodate these days...the days are finally getting longer and finally getting warmer!  I'm putting the emphasis on "finally" only out of frustration with the cold/dark April we've been experiencing this year.  I do think I'm getting more patient with some things as the years pass by but "feeling and enjoying" spring is one part of life I cannot abide by getting skimped on! 

When the weather outside isn't cooperating, I do get more studio time I guess...maybe that's the only saving grace here for the time being.  I've been doing a good deal of framing and catching up on several things put on the back burner this past fall and winter.  

One thing I finally worked through was another small color pencil study that will perhaps take on new life as a larger painting some day.  This pencil is of an area north of us that still looks fairly much like it may have a couple hundred years ago...well, that's the way I drew it anyway.  The distant shoreline is dotted with houses and docks; I removed them.  They did not contribute to the emotional affect the location had on me - so as the Queen of Hearts so frequently stated in Alice In Wonderland "Off with their heads!"  :)

I'd become stuck on this piece for some time.  The sky was really creating problems in retaining a visual "feel" for the light and carefree clouds.  The wax medium of the prismacolor pencil was fighting me on this.  I came upon another type of pencil that I'd read about and gave them a try.  They are Lyra brand pencils that are oil based rather than wax. It's the wax build up that often throws cogs in the wheels of progress when drawing difficult/stubborn passages in a piece.  Working over the already lain down wax pencil gave me some pause but things worked out alright I think.

Angler's Bay is on Spirit Lake's northeast corner, adjacent to Hales Slough (an old favorite wetland of mine).  This area was part of an intense conservation/preservation effort about 5-6 years ago...it was the final remaining rush bed left on Spirit and an important spawning and nesting area.  The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation led a hard sought campaign to secure the property for our grand children's heritage.  This would not have been possible without the landowners seeing the need for this property's preservation!  

Thankfully there will be no future marinas or private houses and docks dotting this fragile/final remaining wetland.  We ALL get to enjoy this place for generations to come!

Solstice

The Winter Solstice comes tomorrow (Sunday the 21st) and now it definitely looks and feels the part even more than my last post. We've had around 15-16 inches of snow this past week and now the NWesters are bucking up and it's feeling like we're in it for the long haul!

Yesterday after blowing out the drives and paths (3 hours worth) I was walking some mail down to the box and a flock of Canada Geese at least a half mile long (I kid not!) came over the farm at that height you hear the wing beats...it was totally cool! I felt you could hold a conversation with them - they were so low and the air so still. The birds weren't in their characteristic "V" but one long string until near the very end they began to break off into a couple separate formations. I usually think of Canada Geese as autumn birds...but hey it was still autumn yesterday after all.

I've done Canada Geese in my work before but not in winter settings. Most of my winter work, whether photography or artwork, has served as Christmas card material over the past 40 some years. In early years I did pen and ink, transparent wash, or lino cuts for cards, but gradually graduated to serigraphs (silkscreen prints), photographs and paintings.

I should have opted for a photograph this year because my time has been too tied up, but I got this ...well, for a lack of a better word "idea", that I thought would make a nice winter painting so started one about 2 weeks ago. It wasn't till I was about half way through the piece that Georgie said to me something about how close to the "deadline" I was working. I pondered her warning and then realized, good grief - Christmas was somehow sneaking up on me! How did this happen?!

The Black-capped Chickadee header for this blog was a simpler "illustrative" card from 1984. I believe it was a ink/wash drawing. I did many more ink drawings than any other medium early on, in fact my first "sale" in the early 60's was an ink drawing.

The next year's design got a little more involved, it was a 6 color serigraph. One thing about silk screening is the "error factor" when you have miss-registrations, ink "accidents", and mixed colors running out before they were supposed to. On this piece I ran out of the two rabbit colors (the highlight base and the top color) before I wanted, so I had a lot of prints with no rabbit - just tree!

In recent years, I've done a few more color pencil pieces but I think the first one to be done specifically for a Christmas card design was this one done in 2001 (titled "Winter in Iowa"). I really enjoy color pencil work but have not done many recently...it's a time thing...dang time!

Yesterday I finished printing, writing, and sending out the last of my Christmas cards for the year. "Time" really got in my face this year...I'll have to start this process around Halloween next year maybe?

Keep warm out there!