Studio stuff.

A view of a part of Linda Heslops' studio showing a work in progress (with the masking tape), a recently finished watercolor and a framed oil/acrylic hung on the wall. All are Vancouver Island westcoast scenes.

This years first camping trip.

An early morning view of our campsite on the beach at Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island, Sat March 21st. Pretty cold, some ice on the puddles, but the day turned out fine and sunny (just as the weatherman had predicted!). In summertime this oceanfront campground tends to fill up with a few too many rowdies for our liking but either side of summer it makes a fine destination. Only two or three other rigs were set up and they were all nicely seperate from each other.

We took a long walk east to the Deering bridge over the sloughlike area of the San Juan River and then followed the road back to the south end of the beach then north along the beach back to our camp. About seven or eight kilometers total. Watched a mink, then an otter and a seal frollicking in the water and had fun with the campgrounds' resident crow population.

Flowerstones and more.

Yet another one of Linda Heslops' remarkable watercolor paintings of stones. Once more this image includes poryphyr (fairly common on the beaches of Vancouver Island) and a particularly nice piece in the center of the painting shows well developed 'flowers'.

Some Stones

A Linda Heslop watercolor painting of pebbles and rocks including granite and porphyry (flowerstone) collected locally on Vancouver Island.

Heli-logging on Vancouver Island.

Heli-logging, an expensive way of timber removal from areas where road building would be even more expensive. The helicopter we've seen in use the most frequently is an Air-Crane Sikorsky S-64 as seen in the picture, here it's at the refueling/staging area alongside a mainline logging road in the southern part of Vancouver Island. In the mid 1980's a massive Russian helicopter (and Russian support team) was used in the Gordon River area for a few years. Well worth checking out the videos at the link I provided to see just how versatile this machine is. Timber harvesting, fire suppression, and a variety of heavy lift operations can be viewed. As for the trees, nowhere's safe anymore!

Tricksters

 

Today a pair of ravens dropped by and surveyed things from the top of a sequoia opposite our home. Not uncommon for them to be in the city but not an everyday occurrence either. First Nations people knew the raven as 'the trickster', a most appropriate name for this very intelligent bird. The recent snowfalls across Vancouver Island have brought hardship to birds, particularly those used to hunting for prey or scavenging in the forest as there's been sufficient snow to obscure their food supplies. As a result of this, the bald eagles have taken to scavenging from garbage dumps in large numbers competing with the resident seagulls and crows. Ahh, how the mighty have fallen!

Hoe Chuckers, the modern way to decimate the forest.

Three views of  hoe chuckers on Vancouver Island, some scale is apparent as I drove by the parked one. Very expensive machinery that processes timber to size and species for the mills requirements via computer software updated each day. The lower photograph shows one stacking timber into a coldpile at the roadside for removal by logging trucks, should the logs need moving more than three times to get to the road, then it becomes cheaper to build a new road.  Smaller trees can be handled right from the harvesting stage as can be seen in this video of one at work. Pretty amazing equipment, just too bad it puts so many of people out of work.

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'

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.

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.

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.

Long Weekend Camping Trip

We went camping for three nights over the Labour Day long weekend. The weather stayed fine but we'd have liked it to have been hotter. We drove out to Port Renfrew and then into the forest via the logging roads ending up at a place we found earlier this year that catches a reasonable amount of daylight and has a decent view across the valley. A weeks worth of rain had all the normally low flowing creeks (at this time of year) gushing with water. Took the time to walk further along the road to view the flow from a couple of springs that resurge from the limestone/igneous contact about 30m higher up. Impressive! Must try to find a way in when it's drier.

The first time we visited this area, about a month ago, we had three visits from a black bear. We'd set up close to his elderberry patch! The third visit we scared him off with an airhorn and he nonchalantly took a path to his berries before coming through camp. The berries are gone now so no worries of his coming back to dine here this weekend though he's still patrolling the area as evidenced by recent scat along the road. In fact we believe it was him we saw from our vehicle when we decided to move camp to a much higher point above the spur we'd taken. We positioned our chairs to get a good view of the roads in the valley about 450m below us, not much traffic (as per usual). We also stopped for a look at the Grants Grove section of the Gordon River and viewed the gorge from the bridge across it. This is a section of the river that experienced whitewater kayakers sometimes come to paddle. The 3 pics show some of the view.

A great weekend in a remote location. Complete solitude. It feels mighty fine to be away from everything.