"Big Bluestem in Bloom"

(Andropogon gerardii)

color pencil drawing © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

Just finished another color pencil drawing for this summer's exhibit at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City, Iowa.

I've never drawn grasses before, except "implied" as a background form or shape.  And since this summer's solo exhibit will be at a national "Tallgrass Prairie" type refuge, I thought it'd be very appropriate to try to do some small studies of prairie grasses as well.

Of course Big Bluestem is the Tallgrass icon for grasses, so what better subject to start with!?  I am drawing many of these small studies as "close-up" drawings; to bring the subject matter into a more personal/true experience type of presentation.  The grasses depicted here were in "bloom", which is actually surprising to some people; many do not equate grass with having flowers...sometimes referred to as "florets".  Bloom time is usually around early to late July here, depending on the season's conditions.

This drawing was done from some video footage taken here on our native pasture in 2011.  When I started working on this summer's solo exhibit I garnered many images from the video work I've been doing over the past several years...they came in handy for reference material "and" inspiration, during this past winter!

Spring continues to make inroads here at the studio...rather chilly and breezy today but the yard is full of Red-wing Blackbirds and Robins...and the Great Blue Herons have just started showing up at the rookery across the valley! 

Well, back to work here - have a great week out there!

 

 

Its a Seesaw

Snow geese and the Gibbous Phase Moon

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

It can be a crazy time of the year, March.  One day is very hopeful for spring thaw and another blankets the ground again.  So it is each year, and this morning was no different when the landscape looked like winter once more, yet this afternoon the landscape's a blank canvas again and sunny.

The thing I like best about March is the sudden movement of the wildlife, with new species appearing, and - the sounds!

Last week it was difficult getting any work done for a couple days.  Every time I'd get in the middle of something, Georgie might show up and say "Have you looked outside"?  I'd stop what I was doing and go out to see clouds of Snow Geese moving through...it was really a fun sight.  Other times during those days, I'd actually hear the geese as they flew lower and over the studio.

White-tail Deer crossing Waterman Creek

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

The deer herd has shown its true numbers during the afternoon hours the past 3 weeks too.  Each winter, after the deer season has ended, some time seems to need to pass before we can get a good idea of what the spring population will look like.  They all seem so comfortable with daylight again, now that its been some time since the shooting stopped!  It looks like we'd better keep the fencing around the smaller trees in the yard for a few more weeks...each day we have a skiff of snow, we see deer tracks all over the yard...next to the house and studio.  Our pussy willow has become a salad bar again; we don't keep it corralled - the pruning doesn't seem to bother that bush too much.

The Robins are back, and the Juncos have returned on their trip north too.  The male Goldfinches are starting to show their molt to bright yellow, and the Cedar Waxwings are taunting me from the bushes each morning I come out...I say "taunting" because they seem to make a game of keeping their distance when I appear with my camera.

Tomorrow is the vernal equinox...the first day of spring, but next week sounds like we'll be getting chilled down a little again.   Its like a seesaw, and like that seesaw was as a kid, its fun!

"Weather Permitting"!

"Valley Storm"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison 

(click on image for a larger view) 

Its nice thinking about weather that isn't necessarily "winter" for a change!  And the new exhibit at Arts on Grand in Spencer, Iowa is full of all kinds of weather - stormy weather, fair weather, warm weather, winter weather, rainfall, fog, snow..."Weather Permitting" an exhibition of "weather"!  

"June Rains Past"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

I have 5 pieces of work juried into the "Weather Permitting" exhibit  (the two here are a sampling of those) and was able to view the showing yesterday afternoon - it is an excellent mix of artists, mediums, and weather!  A fun "must see" exhibit! 

"Weather Permitting" runs from March 4 through April 5th, with a reception on March 13th (5 - 7 p.m.) at Arts on Grand in Spencer.  If you're in the Spencer area during the next few weeks, be sure and stop in Arts on Grand for a fun day of "weather"!

 

Still Waiting!

"Prairie Lily"

(Lilium philadelphicum)

color pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

 

Still waiting in the wings for spring!  Aren't we all?!  But there is hope in the air with predictions of day time highs above freezing toward the end of the week! 

 

A year ago we were only days away from seeing our Great Blue Herons returning to the rookery across the valley and were seeing the area Bald Eagles sitting tight on their nest.   The Great Horned Owls are apparently incubating/hatching nearby...we see the top of the "sitter's" head when we pass by and crane our necks.  And the numbers of Mourning Doves is stretching a bit here on the acreage...we haven't seen huge flocks of Red-wing Blackbirds yet but a few individuals have been on the feeders in the yard.

 

But I've been working on early summer on the drawing board; another prairie forb (wildflower) has grown to fruition.  I chose a lily that is native to my county (O'Brien) and still exists in a state remnant nearby.  I won't disclose its location as there are a meager few left and I don't want them stressed any more than they already are. 

 

I first came upon "Lilium philadelphicum" on the north shore of Lake Superior and in the adjacent forests, where it is locally known as the "Wood Lily".  I was quite surprised to find this beautiful small lily back in the mid 1990's here in O'Brien County when the state acquired a wonderful native prairie remnant; we walked the remnant the year prior to its public disclosure and found the "Wood" Lily on the prairie there!  I discovered the "Lilium philadelphicum" was one and the same as on NE Minnesota's "Arrowhead" region, and was pleased to call it "Prairie Lily" for the first time!

I drew this color pencil drawing from that very same "first" Prairie Lily here...from a slide I took of the plant in bloom that morning of discovery. Hmmm, "slides", that's something I haven't worked from in a long while!

Its been cathartic doing these prairie plant drawings, getting that winter "thing" purged from my system!  I do hope to do more when I can.

I have an exhibit on the prairie coming up in July-August this summer, down at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City, Iowa.  Neal Smith has a large and quite nice visitor center and the exhibit will be at the J. N. "Ding" Darling Gallery there.  The exhibit will follow my past "From the Tallgrass" theme, relating wholly to the Tallgrass Prairie.  I'll follow up more in a future blog on the details.

Still waiting and trying to be patient!

Waiting on Spring...

"February Evening, Mammatus Clouds"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

 

I'm no different than the next person...I'm being tricked by the nice little breaks in the winter weather here and getting somewhat of a case of spring fever.  Not that I want to give up my studio time yet; I still have too much to do!  

 

But late in the afternoon yesterday, Georgie came over to the studio to tell me that I'd better get my face peeled off of the monitor and look outside!  It was pretty cool and a real surprise - mammatus clouds in mid February!  That's weird...ya cool too, but not something you'd expect to see!  She caught me just in time too because I only had a couple minutes to get some photographs of the scene before the light was lost to the early evening. The view is right outside the kitchen looking east.

 

Today is a nice day as well, but the snow, ice and wind is supposed to pick up tonight making tomorrow (Thursday) somewhat unpleasant again; the birthing process for spring can be agonizingly long!

 

"False Gromwell and Prairie Phlox"

(Onosmodium molle and Phlox pilosa)

color pencil drawing - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

 

I have been forestalling the inevitable onslaught of spring fever by working on spring subject matter here; the spring landscape finished about a week and a half ago (last blog) and the small color pencil piece seen above.  

 

Over the past couple years or more I've been working on artwork of various prairie forbs (wildflowers) found in our native pasture here.  The "False Gromwell and Prairie Phlox" is the latest color pencil drawing, just finished this week.  These are both fun plants - the False Gromwell is less showy from a distance but quite a "looker" up close...the Bumble Bees love this plant; I'd say an early summer favorite of theirs!  It has some "nicknames" like most wildflowers, one that fits it real well is "marble seed".  It has a small roundish seed that is creamy white when matured, and is as hard as a marble.  A weird charachteristic is - after a rain, the plant can smell like a wet dog or mule!  (All's normal again once it dries out thank goodness!)  You can't tell much from this drawing, but this plant's "structure" is quite beautiful, pretty even when not in bloom.

 

The Prairie Phlox (some call it "Downy Phlox") is another native plant here I've been doing my best to help proliferate.  It is quite showy from a distance and up close...the issue around here seems to be that the deer and the rabbits love to eat it as soon as it starts blooming...ugh!  I do my best to dissuade them, but its not easy.  Skippers seem to like the phlox about as much as the Bumble Bees do.  These are both early summer bloomers, out before the prairie really goes crazy with color, but once they are out - its like the gate has been swung open for the race to begin, a fun time on the tallgrass prairie!

 

Think Spring, but don't be too impatient!

 

 

 

 

 

Easel Rest...Keeping Warm!

"Along the Southeast Corner Fence Line"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on imagefor a larger view)

Finally finished my latest painting on the studio easel and am now working on starting the next, framing work for clients, trying to clean up this place and...oh ya, and keeping warm!

There's a lot of winter discontent out there, we all hear it, but I'm really kind of scratching my head.  I do remember winters like this AND worse.  I was younger then and trudged right through the sub zero temps and high winds...Iowa has always had high winds in the winter.  We never used to talk about wind chill either, or if there was an awareness of it I'm sure it was just the adults who talked about it.

But now the Weather Channel has "names" for winter weather fronts, and all the news anchors shout out the winter "ravages" like dooms day announcements...I still just scratch my head and think its so much unnecessary hype.  Its always been cold in the winter here, and besides - everyone else is getting lucky with all their snow and we've just barely scraped up enough to call the ground white now.  

The only bad thing I can think of here is without a good snow cover this winter - so much frost has gone into the ground that it has been a mess for wells freezing up and pipes bursting...that's never fun!   We're very dry in our area and with frozen ground, there's little that's going to replenish it come thaw, as the majority of moisture existing can only run off and not soak in until the frost is gone.

But I've been keeping warm in the studio with a spring painting, born from an idea last spring.  It was a pleasant morning on a new (for me) piece of prairie and woodland...always fun seeing a new landscape for the first time!  I took a photograph of this scene along the SE corner fence line of the property and almost imediately thought it spoke "painting" to me...I wasn't sure but it reinforced itself later as I viewed files here in the studio.  It had to wait for other work to be done here during the summer, fall and first half of the winter; but now its complete, still drying on the easel.

It needed few changes to move from the original file to the canvas...sometimes you find a scene that just really suits your feelings about what you want to paint and all the elements are there just as you'd like them to be.

Hope winter has been good to you!  And I do apologize to the SE part of the country for belittling this winter...they would certainly disagree with me! 

 

Still In Our Own Backyard

 "Sun Dogs at Prairie Hill Farm"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

I thought I'd share this morning's frigid sun dogs here on the acreage, and go with the theme I presented last week with what inspires me here right in our own backyard!  Only this week we'll look at just a sampling of photographs garnered here, without leaving the premises...there is something everyday here...and yet I miss most of it I'm sure!

 "Sun Dogs at Prairie Hill Farm"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

We've been having sun dogs lately and this morning was no exception as, the top two images testify.  However I've been putting off photographing them because the landscape is fairly bleak and snowless, taking away much of the winter's charm. Well I finally gave in for a "few" brief moments this morning and tried a couple shots anyway...the temp was at 10 below, but the wind was brisk (35 below windchill) and one shot I wanted to try was decided against and a shot from behind the barn was tried instead...the image directly above is from the edge of the crib, looking south east.

 

 "Big Bluestem in the North Pasture"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

But there are warmer times with hours spent outside here...sometimes just taking it in and other times doing chores in the pasture, yards, gardens or buildings...there's a lot to do here, beside being "inspired"!  But "inspiring" it is, and here's a small sampling of images photographing here on the property, throughout the year!

 

 "Bird Visitors Through the Year"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Cope's Gray Tree Frog in the Grove"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Fawn in the Yard"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Monarchs Roosting in the Back Grove"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Sharp-shinned Hawk in Front of the Studio"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Skunk Paying a Visit"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Male Western Meadow Hawk Dragonfly"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Anvil across the Valley"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

 "Storm in the Valley"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

The weather images can be impressive here with our prairie's Big Sky, but there is so much more that is small or fleeting...things are certainly missed every day.  But what we do find, watch and marvel at, is amazing...we're very blessed.

Once again, I'm procrastinating!  Back to work at the easel!

Hope you're having a warm place to rest this winter, be good to one another and be inspired!