Thinking about Water Colour from the top of PKOLS

The world full of colour

Sunday evening, I headed to the top of PKOLS  with the new camera in search of photos.  I have, over the years, taken hundreds of photos of PKOLS (known to some as Mount Douglas).  But this time, I went with a slightly different objective: to find source material to inspire some watercolour activity.  

Yep.  Watercolour, my most recent attempt to learn a new skill.  My Aunt Wyona jumpstarted things for me.  When she was visiting in May,  she went out to to the art stores to gather the materials needed, and spent a few evenings giving some lessons to me, my sister Bonnie, and my son Duncan.

Working with Wyona was fun.  She brought with her both her experience of Chinese brush painting (from all those years in Malaysia) and of watercolour. For photos of the masterpieces completed under her most excellent tutelage, you can check out this post over on the Larchhaven Blog.

Of course, once Wyona was gone, I was left with the business of trying to remember how to go about doing things on my own.   That was harder.   For sure, I will be signing up for a course in the fall, but it seemed that it might be fun to continue picking up the brush throughout the summer, to see if watercolour and I might become more intimate with each other. 

I continued in my quest to transform photos of "the lake" (which means "The Shuswap Lake") into a watercolour versions.   I am still a newby, but there is something satisfying in seeing what the water and paint could do.  

Today, I started to branch out.   My friends Stacy and Jess came over to spend the day painting in the back yard.  This time I used a photo from a recent trip to Arbutus Cove as a guide. 

As you can see from the original photo, below I am not exactly at the 'accuracy' stage. And there is much to be learned about how to draw a tree!   But how fun to have some new skills to learn.  :-). 

I am a beginner at the 'enjoying myself' stage, which is something to be celebrated. I have certainly been happy to at least get water and paint on the paper. 

And so, to return to the matter of PKOLS.   Having spent a day looking at a photo of a place I love, and trying to imagine it in watercolour, it seemed right to gather more photos of another place I totally love, PKOLS!

It was just after 8pm when I was at the top.  I knew that if I waited another hour or so, the sunset would drench the sky in pink, but as it was, I still got the gift of a stunning pallette of blues and greys.  I also got to spend sometime pointing the camera in all directions, zooming in and out, thinking only about finding shots that might be fun to reproduce in watercolour.

So, here are some of the watercolour ideas I came away with.

These first three three shots are basically the same spot, taken from the top of PKOLS looking out towards Sooke, but from a distance.

Same shot but zooming in to get closer.

Again, getting closer.

 

What I love about the above photos is the fact that they already look a bit like water colour paintings. Or, indeed, like they are the product of collage work using different coloured strips of paper. 

 

I just continued working my way around the 360 degree view that you can have at the top.   The pallet of blues just extended itself, as one looks in the direction of the Saanich Peninsula (where the important ȽÁU, WELṈEW̱ Tribal School sits in the shadow of the Mountains).  That school is doing the work of SENĆOŦEN language revitalization with their immersion programs.  Impressive.  Standing at the top of the hill, looking out over the water, I am reminded of listening to John Elliott tell the story of PKOLS, and of how the Transformer stood at the top of PKOLS, picking up people and throwing them into the water where they were transformed into Islands.  I think I also heard a version of this from Rob Clifford and from Nick Claxton.  The SENĆOŦEN word for islands, we were told, is "ancestors of the deep."  

In this account, each island has the name of a specific ancestor (and a name that links one to stories/knowledge about that specific island).  In this Origin Story account, once some people had been transformed into islands, other people were then picked up and placed on the different islands, and told that they were to take care of their ancestors, and their ancestors would take care of them.   

I find this story quite moving, and it gives me a quite different way of looking at the islands. If I understand them as ancestors, there are different questions about ways to better understand my obligations with respect to those ancestors (including such things as calling them by their proper names,  and understanding different ways of asking about how, when, whether one comes for a visit!)  [There are some lovely maps of the islands with their proper names starting on p.20 of Dave Elliott Sr's book, The Saltwater People]

In this image, I like how the land reaches out to the water in a way that looks like Raven's beak.

Returning to the moment at the top of PKOLS, since my focus was on watercolour, I also found myself looking up to the sky for inspiration.  

At that time of early evening, the blue of the sky was also tinged by swathes of golden shaded clouds. 

With a change of focus on the camera, it was possible to catch the 'sharp edge' on that particular cloud formation.

Here is another version of the same shot, different zoom, and after the wind and continued blowing, stretching the cloud even further across the sky.

The question now is what these moments of beauty might look like once I have had some time to sit in front of a piece of paper with water and paint. I am looking forward to the exploration (or even just an extended period of time staring at the images).

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ADDENDUM - July 7, 2021

photo from top of PKOLS

Wyona came for a visit, so I got to have another lesson.  

Here is the photo we chose to copy.

Here is my version of the photo:

Rebecca's interpretation

And here is Wyona's interpretation of the same scene (which she managed to do in between all the work of walking me through the steps). 

Wyona's interpretation

I love it that she added in the boats as a detail (and then coached me through doing one).  No, they are not in the original photo, but I think they anchor (forgive the pun) the image.  I do have some work to do on colour-mixing (I was in fact TRYING to use the same colours as in the photo), but Wyona keeps telling me it is fine for the colours to be 'ideas' and not simply 'copies'.  Well there you go.   I love looking at both versions together, and thinking of the fun of painting alongside her.

A table of delights!

The table is still covered with paints today, so we can use the same pallet for another painting (I only have her here for another day or so). 

 

Funny that this photo does not look 'messy' to me; it looks like a landscape of possibility and adventure!