Drying out in the Rainforest

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Location Taken: Olympic National Park, Washington
Time Taken: June 2008

During my first trip to Seattle, one of the places I made sure we went to is the Hoh Rainforest.  It’s one of the temperate rainforests you find dotted along the northwest coast of North America.

If you don’t know, temperate means it’s in the middle latitudes, in the areas where it does occasionally get cold enough for snow and frost, so they actually do have seasons here.  Which means there’s a lot less in the way of monkeys and toucans and more in the way of elk and raccoons.  Oh, and fangirls of sparkly vampires, since Forks, the town where the Twilight series is set, is about an hour drive away, and there’s all sorts of people both visiting due to and capitalizing on the sparkly vampire craze.

But the rainforest is much calmer.  Moss grows thick on the trees, and rain falls daily – wait, no, not daily.  It might fall that frequently or more in other parts of the year, but the area does have a dry sunny season.  And it does hit the rainforest as well every so often, including the year we visited.  They were in solid drought conditions for the area at the time.  Which still means much wetter than 90% of the Earth’s surface, but the moss was mostly dried out, the plants were looking a bit sad, and the streams were running low.

At least that meant there was sun to illuminate the moss, rather than the standard gray-skied photos you see of the area.  Admittedly, it just made the moss look that much drier, so it was a bit of a wash.  I would have preferred the rain, really, even if it meant I had to juggle an umbrella and my camera while walking the paths.  So I’ll have to go back at some point when there’s more moisture in the area, to get the real Hoh Rainforest experience.  You know, the one with soggy shoes.

  

Waving a Blue Flag on the Side of a Lake

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Location Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

I’m used to irises. Both my Grandmother and Mother have some in their gardens. I suppose that’s why seeing wild irises is both a true delight and a very odd experience.

I mean, they’re garden flowers, right? What are they doing hanging out along the side of a lake?

Blue Flag Irises are quite native to North America, though, and that includes Newfoundland. And they really do look right in place amongst the other flowers and plants along the rocky beach front.

Still, I’m so used to thinking of garden flowers as something special and exotic, and wildflowers as the everyday flowers that are less valued though not less beautiful, that the mix-up of the two boggles my little mind.

Still, they were very lovely. I probably couldn’t have take a poor photo of them if I tried.

  

Road Signs without a Road

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Location Taken: New Brunswick, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

Every so often you spot something a bit, shall we say, out of place. Look closely at this photo, can you spot it?

It’s those signs on the tree. One says there’s gas to the left in 5 km, the other says we’re intersecting New Brunswick Highway 12.

Except there’s no road there. Heck, I was standing in a field right next to a hotel parking lot. And the signs are only visible from said parking lot.  And only the rear part of it where few people go.

And no, that’s not Highway 12 back there. Highway 12 doesn’t even exist, well, at least not anymore. It closed down in 1976. That sign looks pretty good for being 36 years old.

And I doubt there’s gas in exactly 5 kilometers in that direction, too. If I remember right, that was an unpopulated hilly area, on the edge of the dividing line between English-speaking Canada and French-speaking Canada. Well, it’s not so much a line as a wide swath of area where everyone local is at least partially bilingual. Most of the signs were swapping over to French already, though.

Makes me wonder if northwestern New Brunswick would join Quebec if it seceded like it keeps threatening to do…

  

A Gathering Storm

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Location Taken: Near Devil’s Tower, Wyoming
Time Taken: June 2010

I’ve stated before how much I love clouds in the prairies, but even more than that I love storms. And storms in the prairies are beyond marvelous. I know there’s a lot of people who think the people who choose to live in, say, Kansas or South Dakota or Manitoba must be boring, to choose such a boring flat land as their home, but those people have no clue of the beauty of the sky.

In more populated areas, or heavily mountainous, sure, the clouds are pretty, but they’re hidden behind the local landscape, and hazed out by pollution and humidity. If you’re lucky enough to find one of the rare spots where you can actually see to the horizon without a tree or mountain or building getting in the way, the distant clouds are blurred away anyway.

But in the clear air of the prairies and plains of the central North American continent, the air is clear and so are the sightlines. And you can literally watch storms grow in the distance. And my goodness, are the storms impressive.

There’s a reason for that, and it all has to do with geography. Strong storms form when there is an imbalance in the air, whether from temperature or humidity. The air will then try to equalize this imbalance, causing great motions in the air known better as wind. And as the air gets disturbed, clouds form, and rain may form. And if the imbalance is great enough, especially if cool air ends up on top of warm air (the opposite of the way they want to be), thunderstorms form, and grow to impressive heights and strengths.

And the great plains commonly have such imbalances. Cool dry air comes down from Canada, the humidity pulled out of it from passing over mountain range after mountain range, and it hits the warm wet air slowly working its way up from the Gulf of Mexico. And the cool air, moving both quicker than the warm air and coming from greater heights, will often find itself above the warm air. And the storms form. It’s why this part of the US is the most tornado-prone region in the world, and bears the nickname Tornado Alley.

Even when there’s no tornadoes with a thunderstorm, the storms themselves are large and impressive. And with the sightlines of the area, you can see all of it. It’s no wonder storm chasing started in the US, and is still most common in Tornado Alley. It may be dangerous, it may be expensive (just think of all the gas required!), and many people will think you’re a bit cracked, but oh the storms!

…I may have frequent inclinations towards storm chasing myself, if you haven’t noticed…

  

Don’t Overlook the Underpainting

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Time Painted: March 2007

I’m quite glad I decided to bring my camera to my oil painting class this day. You see, I had just finished my underpainting of my current project, and rather liked how it turned out. And well, I was about to paint right over it, so I wanted some record of it.

Underpainting is an interesting thing. Really what it is is a value sketch of the subject made on the exact same surface as your final painting.

…A value sketch is a single color drawing or painting without too much detail that’s focusing on capturing relative brightness of various areas of the piece. It focuses on defining areas of light and dark rather than specific features of the subject.

Admittedly, there are reasons you paint an underpainting on the same canvas, rather than keep it on the side for future reference. The values you paint influence the colors above it. Light areas appear lighter and dark appear darker. That’s why my painting is in this blue color, as well. We were given the option of this blue or a warm red-brown color. The blue cools the piece, while the red-brown warms it.

And well, I just decided that with the coloration of the model, her outfit, and the background, warming the piece wouldn’t produce what I wanted.

I’ll talk more about that next week, when I’ll show the final piece.