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.