Got the Blues...

Great Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)

color pencil drawing -  © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

My mother's favorite color was blue.  I remember all the things she decorated with; many things throughout the house favored blue. I think of her during the year when the few blue flowers of the prairie bloom.  In the spring it's Blue-eyed Grass, in the late summer its some of the asters, (like Sky Blue Aster)...in the early fall, for me its Great Lobelia!

I came across a large group of Great Lobelia this past September on a hillside seepage.  I took several photographs of the plants but none seemed to do them justice, like I feel they need...so I decided to make it a fall project to do a small color pencil of them instead.  I should probably title this piece something like "Great Lobelia Blues".

I've not had success getting this wildflower to grow in our pasture because we're fairly gravely here, and this flower really favors a wet location.  Now I have a small bouquet of them "growing" in a frame in my studio...a nice way to remember my mother, and a late September morning on the prairie.

 

Try'n...

Iris Study (Iris shrevei)
color pencil rendering - 6X8"

Trying to get back in the groove here at the studio...we've been battling the winds and rain the past week and finally see the sun today. The winds here are just atrocious during the spring. This week the flood light above the outside studio door spit out it's bulb - wind unscrewed the thing! The south side of the barn roof is going to take some doing to just "patch" the holes the past 4 weeks of wind have torn out.

But life is beautiful to behold and most of the summer birds have returned and are serenading me as I type. The Baltimore and Orchard Orioles are back and hitting the grape jelly hard and the hummingbirds are chasing each other around their feeders.

I've taken to working on drawings each night - my days are full with web site work for clients and painting time has not revisited me in some months...it is discouraging but this too shall pass.

The Iris study is another of the many things stuck in the nooks and crannies of my brain. Sometimes these are hard to retrieve but this was drawn from a photograph I took just last spring here at the studio.

We have done native planting around the studio and the studio deck. There's a small fountain north of the deck that has a small clump of native wild iris - Iris shrevei, also sometimes called wild blue flag, or southern blue flag. This iris is native to the marshes here in NW Iowa.

In the past I'd typically vignette the flowers from their background but I was rather taken with the out of focus Wild Columbine leaves in the background of the photograph so, with a little rearranging, I left them in as a foil for the irises.

The prairie is picking up speed here and this is the time of year that outside work becomes nearly full time...I love it! I need to get out and anything for a good excuse!

See you outside...