Oyster River Potholes
Watercolour and oil pastel
©2019 Charlene Brown
I’ve never seen a painting of the Oyster
River Potholes, which are on Vancouver Island, south of Campbell River, about a
three-hour drive north of Victoria.
Although I could find no evidence on the
internet that anyone had ever tried painting these sandstone bowls,
there are some excellent photographs. I was particularly impressed with the
composition of some dramatic grayscale close-ups on Dave Ingram’s Island Nature blog.
Painting these photographs was not what I
had in mind though – they are works of
art in their own right and copying them would just be silly.
I wanted an overall panorama of this whole
stretch of the Oyster River. I achieved this by positioning the various photos
of portions of the formation in what seemed like a reasonable composition. It is unlikely that it is accurate.
