Prairie Painter - Painting from Studies

 "September Dawn, Little Sioux River"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

"Prairie Painter" is the handle I use for my business blog - http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com - I think it fits since I do paint the prairie out here :) My business is art, and my artwork is painting, drawing and photography. I've been a member of the Artisans Road Trip since the very first one back in 2004...I did take a year off while building our studio here in SE O'Brien County, but have been a constant supporting member and participant.

We've been introducing members and talking about exhibits for the 2012 A.R.T. and I thought I'd change things up a little and describe my painting process when working from painted "studies", in this case a small oil painting started on location, then finished in the studio. These small "studies" are often used as a platform to work from, to paint a larger finished work in the studio.

The painting shown here 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 and read about from that original blog from September 17, 2009 - http://prairiepainter.blogspot.com/2009/...

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.

You can see other work I've done at my studio's web site -
http://www.morrisons-studio.com

Thank you for visiting our Artisans Road Trip blog during the year - be sure and check back for more artists of the 2012 Artisans Road Trip!