Stones and barnacles.

A watercolor depicting stones and barnacles trapped in a small tide pool. This image is called 'Castaways' and is available in several print formats, a better view of the print can be seen here http://www.fullcirclestudio.ca/linda/lindaheslopprints.html.

Snolar Bear.

For the first time since 1971 Canada is blanketed with snow from coast to coast to coast (yes, Canada has three coasts). Fortunately for us Victoria typically missed the worst of it, though we did get unusually cold temperatures and snow is still in the forecast for tomorrow and Christmas Day. Anyway, with typical Linda Heslop creativity, we now have a 'Snolar Bear' on our front lawn!

Dock Stars.

A watercolor image called "Dock Stars" showing an abundance of sea stars and anemones, along with the ever present barnacles, awaiting the tides return. A common scene around the pilings of the Vancouver Island docks and jetties.

Show time!

 

Linda Heslop is having a show at Full Circle Studio starting  December 11th and these are some of the new original works that will be on display there. Only the bottom  seascape is an oil painting on canvas, the stones/pebbles and the starfish images being watercolor paintings done on  canvas. She's been extremely busy preparing new originals for the show and there are many more fresh works to be displayed there.

Starfish Trooper

Material for Linda Heslops' watercolors of sea stars come from photographs such as these. Abundant in rocky crevices at low tide, they await the seas return. These pictures were taken on the shoreline of Hornby Island (off Vancouver Islands' eastcoast).

Sea Stacks

Sea stacks, small and rugged islands like these are abundant off the westcoast of Vancouver Island. Both of these watercolor paintings were done from photographs taken on our 'off the beaten path' adventures to the wild westcoast. The following photograph shows a cluster of small sea stacks, with bonsai trees, at San Josef Bay near the northern tip of Vancouver Island. It's a wonderful place, easily accessed from the end of the logging road and well worth the 2.5km stroll through the forest to get there. Two vehicle campsites are near the trailhead, one is a Forest Service site but our preferred one is San Josef Heritage Park where considerably more daylight gets in.

Railroad logging on Vancouver Island

The old Shay locie at Lake Cowichan, part of the Kaatza Station Museum outdoor exhibit at Saywell Park. We passed by here a couple of weekends ago and I took this rather indifferent shot. Better views of this and more Vancouver Island logging locomotives can be viewed at 'Preserved! Steam Locomotives of British Columbia' . The last steam loco in use on the island was an Alco, last working out of Woss until 1976. This video shows her running after restorations in 1988.

Woss has the last logging railroad system on the island but nowadays the equipment used looks like this video of a spectacular trestle and a load of empties. 'From Camp to Community' is a great site for getting a view of the old days in the logging industry, check out the pages on The Camps, The Loggers etc too, along with 'loggers lingo' and 'now you're logging'

Knowledge cast in stone.

 

This image of a Japanese concrete casting is called 'Knowledge', the exact meaning of the inscription apparently does not translate well into English but roughly says something along the line of We already have everything. If anyone can shed better light on the translation please make a comment.

Linda Heslop painted this in acrylic on canvas several years ago, a similar watercolor but with the casting set on a background of stones and pebbles had been painted prior to this. The casting resides in our garden.

Arrival of the wettest.

Linda Heslop painted this large triptych seascape in acrylic and oil on 3 canvas boards, it is called 'Arrival'. The original image has a sale pending but is also available as a giclee print available from Full Circle Studio Arts. A typical view of the westcoast of Vancouver Island from the Long Beach area.

Rockin' new watercolors.

Linda spent Saturday and Sunday signing prints of these two new watercolors (here shown on the one sheet of paper they were done on) at the Victoria Home Show. They're so fresh that the giclee art prints were  picked up from the printers on Saturday morning! A limited edition print series of 200 each has been run off.
The work on the right half of the sheet has already been sold to a couple from Calgary, I believe the one of the rocks on the left is still available as an original.

Just a few stones!

This watercolor by artist Linda Heslop is called 'Abundance'. Easy to see why eh? There's pebbles, stones and small rocks all depicted in photo-realistic fashion. Count 'em if you can ;-)

Watching the Olympics

We camped again at our favorite view point last weekend and watched the Olympic Mountains catch many different lighting aspects. This picture shows Mount Olympus (2428m)and the Hoh Glacier probably most of 100km distant.

Zoomed in. Notice the vessel outbound to the Pacific through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The last of the sun's rays presenting a 'golden' appearance.

A fine weekend camping and not as cold as we expected. Listening in to the commercial fishing boats was fun, hake are the prey right now and hopefully there's plenty managing to survive the onslaught. A big thrill for us on Saturday morning was the appearance of a Humpback Whale fairly close to shore (which means about 4km distance from us). Just visible to the eye but the plume when it it surfaced was a giveaway and the binoculars gave a decent view. Too far for the camera though. Stayed in view for a couple of hours following the incoming tide and likely feeding on herring and perhaps krill, after the tide turned it made an encore appearance for another hour or so in the afternoon.

While having coffee on Sunday morning we were again treated to some whale watching. This time a pod of Orcas (aka Killer Whale) proceeded to do much the same kind of thing as the humpback, moving with the tide and apparently feeding on herring. Much easier to identify from distance with the huge dorsal fin knifing across the surface, a few breaches would've been cool but no such luck from either of these sightings.

Look out there's a monster coming!

Big load of lumber on this truck heading out to the log sort at Port McNeill. Notice how tiny the full size pick up appears.

A supercharged Pacific logging truck (check out part 2 of this video too). 550hp and functional brakeset as well as a retarder and a jake brake to control everything.
14ft wide and still turns on a dime (NOT!)
5 minutes of dust cloud, maybe longer, try timing it yourself ;)

Just massive, keep out of the way and travel with care at all times.

Seeing Sea Stars.

A watercolor of sea stars and anemones awaiting the tides return. Pieces of broken shell litter the anemones bodies, and closed up like that, they have an 'alien eye' kind of appearance.

And another of sea stars, Purple Sea Stars again, though they come in a variety of colors. This time they're around a shallow pool nestled in with some pebbles.

Very common to our beaches on Vancouver Island, sea stars and anemones are easily spotted clinging to rocks and in rock pools at low tide. Linda used photographs from our camping trips for reference for her paintings.

Linda Heslop 'diving' into her work.

The three images above appeared in Immersed magazine. An international publication for, and about, technical diving. A very good magazine it was, unfortunately it ended in 2004 after several years of quarterly issues, even us non-divers could enjoy the sense of adventure produced on it's pages. Linda Heslop was commissioned to do a portrayal of the featured diver for each issue from photographs sent to her and further research at the local library in order to blend the subject matter into the image.

Tragedy at sea.

Cape Flattery Wa. and Tatoosh Island, from approx 40km.
Panorama showing the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait.
Tatoosh Island, white building is the lighthouse.

We returned to our camping spot on the 27th Sept to near perfect conditions, sunny and warm with a light breeze. We got settled into our chairs with the VHF radio on and viewed the marine traffic and listened in to plenty of communications amongst the sport fishermen and the commercial fishing boats. Freighter traffic calling in to Victoria, Port Angeles, Tofino and Seattle traffic control gives us the opportunity to both identify the vessels as they pass in front of us and learn a little about their destinations.

Seems the commercial fishboats were having moderate success with the Hake in the Straits. One brief chat mentioned Orcas (killer whales) separating a Humpback whale calf from 2 adults and creating a bloodbath! Yucch, but that's nature. The Orcas' in question must be a transient pod as the resident Orcas diet is salmon and other fish. We also heard the Viking Storm, one of the fishboats, discuss taking their catch south to Westport Wa., fuel is cheaper and there was mention of maybe getting a round of golf in. By dusk these plans had been tragically altered...

A mayday call was made by the Viking Storm, the location given was 1 mile off Tatoosh Island and it was apparent to us which vessel this was as running lights were displayed. The on board situation was a severe injury to a crew member who'd been struck by a cargo hook and was unconcious and bleeding profusely. The nearby USCG station at Neah Bay handled the call and after some delay (likely due to getting medical people ready) put out of the bay and headed towards the Viking Storm which was making all speed back to Neah Bay. Unfortunately fishing boats aren't built for speed but nevertheless they were approximately halfway back when the the coastguard vessel met them. This must've taken 45mins though and in the meantime radio calls indicated just how quickly the injured crewman was fading. Pretty gut wrenching stuff for us. The victim was rushed back to Neah Bay with the Viking Storm following. An expected helicopter from USCG Port Angeles didn't arrive which indicated to us there was no longer any need to transfer the victim to a hospital.

Incredibly sad, we both felt the grief that was sure to come after the loss of a loved one. We've had personal experience and could easily feel the pain to come for the parents, and possibly family, of this young man. We were unable to positively confirm our fears, radio contact had ceased once the Viking Storm had reached Neah Bay and there was no further mention the following day. Nor could I find any news story about this incident after we'd come home. I've withheld names as I don't feel it's appropiate here.

Jackpot!!

We were camping last weekend at our favorite spot overlooking Juan da Fuca Strait and out to the Pacific ocean. I turned the camera on to see the above picture displayed on the LCD, thought I'd hit the jackpot as I hadn't known that Linda had even painted these images let alone photograph them! In miniature they look for all the world like three bars of cherries on a slot machine.
We were treated to several visits by the above raptor and it's partner, most likely a red-tailed hawk though we couldn't distinguish any red color with eyes. Unfortunately this is the only pic I got of the quick flyers, they flew above us, below us and right about eye level and seemed curious about us. If anyone can positively identify this bird I'd much appreciate knowing.

A couple more logos.

Linda Heslop did this design a few years ago, the grotto entered it into the 2008 NSS convention t-shirt salon and were awarded first place. Here it is modeled by a headless and legless caver!

This motif was also done several years ago (well, 11 years ago) for our friend J.P. Buchanan who built a nice little observatory on his property.

Some Logging Action.

Booming grounds in Holberg Inlet. The funky boom boat makes short work of sorting and shifting the load just dropped off.

The arrival of another load of old growth to the log dump. Not too heavily loaded for an offroad logging truck.

Once under the A-Frame the load is quickly lifted off. A series of whistle blasts lets the driver know when he's correctly positioned.

Holberg, we have lift off!

More whistle blasts to position the truck for loading the trailer back on, the boom boat moves in for the load.

Gone in 60 seconds.... well, maybe 5 minutes would be more like it!

A few years back we took a forest tour with Western Forest Products north island operation based out of Port McNeill. This tour had the appeal of a 'cruise' from Coal Harbour down Holberg Inlet to Holberg. From there we were bussed to various sites where operations were taking place, though with the hot, dry weather, not too much activity was actually taking place. A look at the silviculture side of things..... how the second growth is being managed etc, the falling of a tree by the 'bull bucker' was arranged for demonstration at a convenient location, and on to see a 'hoe chucker' pulling logs out of a recent clearcut. Then it was back on the bus and down to the A-Frame at the log dump and about 15 minutes or so of viewing the action there before heading back to Port Hardy.

I'm not happy about the style of logging taking place in BC but must own up to an interest in seeing the massive equipment at work in the forest. Anyone wishing to see 'how it's done' should contact WFP and see what tours are being offered. No need to be familiar with the logging road network when you're bussed around and no abuse to your vehicle either!

Shells 'n Stones.

Shells and stones, still life watercolors from photographs taken at various beaches are another of Lindas' favorite subjects.

Moss Street Paint In.

Saturday, July 19th, 2008 was the date for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's 21st Annual Moss Street Paint In. This free event attracts more than 30k visitors over the course of the 6 or so hours it lasts, that's a lot of exposure! Linda had not planned to attend and thus her participation was unofficial. Usually, for July weekends we hope to be going camping but circumstances prevented this, so when Val (her agent) suggested setting up on a friends lawn she decided to go for it. (Most residences have unofficial attendees using their yards, driveways etc).

The street is closed to traffic at 9am for artists to be able to get set up, so we got there far too early and put the display up. I left shortly afterwards and returned with our daughter at about 11am just as the first visitors were arriving. Still fairly quiet as the pics show. Sarah and I toured about a half of the event and on returning to Lindas' site we noticed 2 sold stickers already attached to pieces. Hmmm, not a bad start. I took Sarah home and got on with replacing our front porch deck for a few hours awaiting a phone call to help dismantle everything for Linda.

So around 4pm I went back. Still a lot of people on the street, making it awkward to drive to the site. I can't tell you just how surprised I was to find there was practically no product left to take away. They'd run out of everything twice and had to get more product from Vals' gallery along with more credit card slips!! People had queued to purchase, anything from art cards to posters and limited editions to giclees, then queued again to have them signed personally. Not that Linda's unknown around here but the quality of work by other artists is extremely high, so she felt very honoured by the public response to her work.

Some advice for anyone attending in the future..... get there early. The event becomes very busy by midday and so it's more difficult to take everything in with the crowds milling around the displays. You can also park somewhat closer by and you'll be thankful for that when the long slow plod up and down Moss St is finished.

Logomotifs

Here are some views of a few logos' Linda has done over the years. These ones were for the National Speleological Society conventions held every year in a different state, here we have them from Colorado and Washington conventions. The Colorado logos' printed on t-shirts show the regular design for all attendees and a modified version for the security people (the Rat Patrol).

The Washington design is shown through the mock up stages to the finished logo sans lettering which was added later by the organizers. Linda donated the original artwork to the N.S.S. auction held near the end of the event.