Just off the Icefields Parkway

 Mistaya Canyon
Watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

 The trailhead for this spectacular canyon is on the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93) just south of Saskatchewan Crossing, and the walk in from the highway is only about half a kilometer.  But, oddly enough, almost everyone drives right by  ̶  at or over the posted 70 kph speed limit. 

This stretch of the river is referred to as a ‘deep slot’ canyon, and I should admit that you can’t get this clear a view of the turbulent water… so I’ve combined what can be seen from a couple of viewpoints looking southwest toward Mt. Sarbach.

White: the Essential Crayon

Mt. Assiniboine

Watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

 

In a blog post on September 17, I mentioned watercolour painting en plein air when the plein air is too cold to do much of anything with actual water. My solution to this problem is to do the outdoor ‘painting’ with a white crayon, and finish the picture is some nice warm place. Here is another one of the paintings I’ll put in the 'white crayon' part of ‘Paint Every Mountain’ − the book I’m putting together about hiking and painting in mountains. And here are some more examples.

Evening in Banff
Watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

Tamarack Glen, Bugaboo Provincial Park, British Columbia
Watercolour and crayon
©2012 Charlene Brown

Evening in Whistler Village
Watercolour and crayon
©2010 Charlene Brown

Kananaskis Country
Watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

Cape Dorset, Nunavut
Watercolour and crayon
©2009 Charlene Brown

COP27 was not a total failure

Al Sahaba Mosque of Sharm el-Sheikh
Watercolour
©2022 Charlene Brown

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, COP27, was the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference.  It was held in November of last year in Sharm El Sheikh, on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt.

No new targets for carbon emissions reduction were established, as COP27 was overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The war had strained pipeline supplies of gas, which meant that oil and gas-producing nations became more influential at COP27, undermining the negotiations. World leaders preoccupied with spiraling energy prices were reluctant to act boldly on fossil fuels.

COP27 was expected to promote climate justice as Africa is the continent most affected but least responsible for the climate crisis. Negotiations for a fund that would compensate developing countries for the loss and damage caused by climate change dominated the negotiations.

Almost two days after the negotiation deadline, member states agreed to establish such a fund – a win for developing countries.  However, there was no agreement about who would pay or who would control and manage the money. This remains to be negotiated at COP28, to be held next month in Dubai, UAE.

What is COP28?

 

 

 

 

The secret ending

(Click on image to enlarge)

Background illustrations for ‘By-election in Exceptional Pass’
Watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about a picture that I’d removed from the graphic novel I’ve written, so I could shorten the book and clear the last page for publishing information.  I mentioned at the time that this would also get the ending in off the outside back cover. 

Just so you’ll know, here’s what the illustrations on the (now) inside back cover look like.  I’ve left out the writing that will go on them, of course, in order not to reveal the surprise ending.

Can anyone identify this? It's as Fatsia japonica or Japanese Aralia

A Summer Job Like No Other - Part II

 The patio at Alestine’s on the hottest day in the history of Inuvik: there are two more tables inside and a few more on the roof

Watercolour and crayon

©2023 Charlene Brown

This painting is based on (and resembles closely) a photo taken by Rachel Hogg, writer of the blog from which the following was excerpted.

"I appreciate everything below the 69th parallel so much more now. Like vegetables. And Vancouver grocery stores. It’s crazy that we just go into stores and get any type of produce we could dream of in the south.  What sort of store has cucumbers often enough that you’d learn to expect them? Only awesome stores that I will do my best not to take for granted after this trip.

"We discovered the awesome side of Inuvik when we went to Alestine’s. It’s a restaurant run by Alice and her husband out of their front lawn, where they have an old school bus that has been converted into a kitchen. She is such a warm and welcoming lady and her spot had the funkiest decor. This is a place that would not likely fly in a big city, but she’s made it a lovely space for both locals and tourists. We had dinner at a picnic table, where 10 minutes after being seated, Alice came by and said: We’re all full so you’re getting company.

"We ended up having a lovely dinner at our picnic table with a couple who are camping around the territories and Alaska for the summer. They’re from Vancouver and one is a genetic counsellor. She was dumbfounded when I told her that my mom was a genetic counsellor too. Out of the 400 genetic counsellors in all of Canada, what are the odds that I’d meet another one up in the middle of nowhere in the Arctic?"

A Summer Job Like No Other Part I

A Jobsite with a View

Watercolour and Photoshop™

©2023 Charlene Brown

This painting is based on a photo by Rachel Hogg showing the view looking straight down from the top of a cell tower near Rainy River Ontario, after her tower inspection team was forced out of northern Alberta by wildfire smoke.

The following is excerpted from Rachel’s blog.

"This was a perfect day to illustrate the highs and lows of this job. Robin and I were in such good moods heading to the first site, and everything was funny.

This is when I think: God I love this job. This is literally the coolest way to spend my summer.

Then I climbed a 100-meter tower. There were quite a few places which needed new electrical tape or nuts that needed tightening, so it took longer than usual, about 2 hours to go up and down."

Note: There were several other pictures on Rachel’s post, having the following captions:

·  "If I have to suffer through these, you need to at least see a picture of one of the nasty buggers 

·  no idea what this one is

·  So many mosquitoes

·  Absolutely massive fuzzy hornet-looking thing that was at least 2 inches long that flew around me when I was 300 feet up – absolutely terrified me

I also don’t think I’ve sweated that much in ages. The last step in each inspection is re-tensioning the guy wires if the tension is outside of the allowable range. We have this spreadsheet which accounts for thermal expansion depending on ambient temperature, so we just plug in the outside temperature, see the adjusted allowable range, and crank the tension turnbuckle until it’s good. We had to adjust so many of the guy wires today, and it is no easy feat.  Both Robin and I have pipe wrenches, and are putting our entire body weight into it. It felt like being on a rowing machine, but for 2 full hours while being devoured by mosquitos. The biggest dilemma of today was: keep our jackets on to avoid becoming a walking bug bite? Or take them off to avoid becoming a walking pool of sweat? "

  

 

The bear's on the phone!

Lake Minnewanka from the C-Level Cirque trail
Watercolour and crayon
©2022 Charlene Brown

I went up to Banff with my daughter and her family last year. She and I limited our hiking to the Bow Falls and the hot springs near the base of Sulphur Mountain, but her husband and one of their sons completed the rather more challenging C-Level Cirque trail. This 9.3-km out-and-back trail takes an average of 4 h 18 min to complete.

They were warned that there were bears in the area – but their only bear encounter was on their phone, which showed a motion-activated video feed from their cabin near Calgary.  They sent us this still from the video.

Editing my Graphic Novel – this whole page just got cut

MONDAY 12 AUGUST: By late morning, they have gathered up their remaining lawn signs, and fanned out around town.  Some have departed in cars for other parts of the constituency. Dan has just knocked on a door and been greeted by the resident St. Bernard.

VOTER WHO LIVES IN EXCEPTIONAL PASS:

Down Heidi, down, girl.  She’s just being friendly. Didn’t like the other candidates at all. Of course we’ll take a lawn sign!

This part of 'By-election in Exceptional Pass' was based on a real life experience I had back in the 1970s before fund raisers had the internet with which to bother people.  I had volunteered to go door-to-door asking for donations for Arthritis Research.  As I recall, all but two of the houses in the neighborhood I was assigned had dogs whose job it was to answer the door.  And at least half of these dogs were named Heidi.  My eldest daughter is named Heidi.  The conversations that followed my opening comments about this remarkable coincidence resulted in an amazing amount of money being handed to me for Arthritis Research. 

Because this page didn't really contribute anything to the storyline, when I decided to shorten the book by one page (in order to keep the last page free for publication info, barcode etc.) out it came.  This also eliminated the problem of giving away the ending by having it on the outside back cover!

 

Ancient Carbon-Neutral Engineering in Yazd

Neighbourhood in Old Yazd
Watercolour and crayon
©2017 Charlene Brown

According to Wikipedia, windtowers, or windcatchers, are traditional Persian architectural elements providing natural ventilation by catching the wind from any direction and directing it down into the building. Windcatchers can be found in traditional Persian-influenced architecture throughout the Middle East, including the Gulf Arab states, especially Dubai.  That is where I first saw them.

According to the World Bank, Dubai is one of the largest consumers of energy per capita in the world – and in the summer months an estimated two thirds of that is used for air conditioning. There has been some hopeful theorizing that the windtower concept could be integrated into new buildings there and this might make a meaningful reduction in their “AC addiction.”

The Carbon Almanac was published in July of 2022.  Several hundred of us worked on this project (you’ll find me at the beginning of the eleventh row at Meet the people behind the Carbon Almanac.) 

Since the publication of the Carbon Almanac, I have received updates about the on-going world-wide campaign to avoid climate disaster by reducing carbon emissions in every way possible. The October 12 Carbon Almanac update quoted a story from the BBC program, Future Planet: The Ancient Persian way to keep cool, “From ancient Egypt to the Persian Empire, an ingenious method of catching the breeze kept people cool for millennia. In the search for emissions-free cooling, the "wind catcher" could once again come to our aid.”

The Future Planet story used the Iranian city of Yazd, as I did in the above story, excerpted from a blog post I wrote in June 2017 following a trip to Iran with the art travel program of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Almost as old as ─ and much more elaborate than ─ Petra

The Ajanta Caves are located about 350 kilometers NE of Mumbai in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The first phase of these partly rock-cut, partly built and sculpted caves was begun in the 2nd century BCE, about two hundred years after the similarly constructed ‘city’ of Petra in Jordan.  The second phase of Ajanta, filled with wall murals that are masterpieces of ancient Buddhist art, was completed about seven hundred years later, in the late 5th century CE.

The best time to visit is during the relatively cool period between October and March, although the lush green surroundings and waterfalls inside and outside the caves are wonderful to see during the June to September monsoon season.  Or so I’m told.

Creative Archaeology: Time Traveling back to 3200 BCE

Ħaġar Qim

Watercolour and crayon

©2023 Charlene Brown

I plan to organize the chapters in the series ‘Time Travel with a bag of crayons’ in chronological order, so Ħaġar Qim, which dates from 3200 BCE, may be the first archaeological site in the book. Ħaġar Qim, meaning ‘standing stones’ is a megalithic temple complex located on a plateau near the south coast of Malta.

(Full disclosure) The tiny island of Filfla, seen off the coast, doesn’t line up with the ‘trefoil’ arrangement of the elongated oval chambers of the temple quite as picturesquely I’ve shown it. And the stone frieze of domestic animals anchoring the base of the painting was actually sketched in the Tarxien temple complex, about 10 km northeast of Ħaġar Qim, when my sister and I were there in 1999.

National Day of Truth and Reconciliation

          

Yesterday, September 30, was Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. The day honours the Survivors of residential schools and the children who never returned home as well as their families and communities.

It is sometimes called Orange Shirt Day, inspired by the story of a child whose personal clothing, including a new orange shirt, was taken from her during her first day at a residential school, and never given back.

I didn’t attend the ceremonies yesterday, so have instead posted this painting of the National Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations at Royal Roads University last June 21. The day’s schedule of events included a, welcome ceremony on the shore of the Esquimalt Lagoon, Lekwungen traditional dancing and singing, traditional canoe landing protocol led by a Songhees Nation Elder, walking tour of traditional ceremonial and healing plants along Colwood Creek with Elders from the Cowichan and Tsawout Nations. 

Predictive Analytics: continuing a series emphasizing extrapolating, visualizing (and painting) unanticipated outcomes

Getting caught Greenwashing

Watercolour, crayon and Photoshop™

©2023 Charlene Brown

According to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (July 24, 2023), ‘greenwashing’ is about misrepresentation, misstatement and false or misleading practices in relation to environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials.

Unfulfilled ESG promises lead to shareholder groups, such as university pension funds, divesting their holdings and to consumers switching brands and boycotting products.

This predictive data visualization is my interpretation of the rise, fall and rise again of stock value (orange line) and product sales (pink line) related to specific marketing events (identified by * in the painting) – a ‘green’ marketing campaign, getting caught ‘greenwashing’ a product or company policy, followed by honest damage control and policy change, over a six-year period. 

 

Paint Every Mountain: compiling a small book about hiking and painting

Winter Sunrise at Lake Louise

Watercolour and crayons

©2023 Charlene Brown

The third of my ‘2022’ projects that I’ll be working on for the rest of 2023 is a small book about hiking and painting in mountains all over the world.

Part of the book will be devoted to winter watercolour painting en plein air when the plein air is too cold to do much of anything with actual water. Beginning with white (and, in this case, neon pink) crayons, then finishing the painting in some nice warm place, is the answer.

There will also be a section on achieving other effects with white crayons (and a cautionary tale about where you obtain your white crayons), as well as special uses for purple (my personal favourite), and ‘neon’ orange and green.

Creative Archaeology: continuing ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’

Antikythera mechanism

Watercolour, crayon, marker

©2023 Charlene Brown

An intricate mechanism, considered to be the world’s first analog computer – dating from the first century BCE, was found in 1900 in a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera in Greece. The recovered fragments of what became known as the Antikythera Mechanism are in the National Archeological Museum in Athens. 

In 2019, I reassembled these fragments and overlaid the result on a sketch I made in 2007 at the Posidonius School in Rhodes. There are many theories as to who designed and built this ingenious mechanism. Our tour guide on a shore excursion from a Black Sea cruise was a firm believer in the hypothesis, based on x-ray computed tomography and notations about solar eclipses, that it did in fact originate at this location in Rhodes.

I recently updated the 2019 painting, after hearing about a more complex version of the Antikythera Mechanism appeared this year under a new name, The Dial of Destiny.   This surprisingly intact and polished machine, now credited to Archimedes, is newly capable of time travel and was found by Indiana Jones, of all people!

Graphic Novel: completing ‘By-election in Exceptional Pass’

I have occasionally tried to add people to my landscape paintings, solving the problem of not being very good at it by placing them as far away as I decently could.

I had one of my grandsons, an art student at Concordia University at the time, draw the people for my first graphic novel, but he’s a professional artist now and doesn’t have the time (and I can’t afford him). And it’s taken weeks to summon up the nerve to add people to the graphic novel I’m writing now. 

Drawing on a smart phone screen by an engineering student on coop assignment as a cell tower inspector, to illustrate the inaccessible position of a tension meter on an anchor cable.  (The top of the 400’ tower was easier to get to than that meter.)

Finally, inspired by the above spontaneous drawing on my granddaughter’s blog, I decided to go for it.

I can hardly do anything but phone people on my smart phone, so I didn’t go so far as to try it there.  I used a full-size computer, guiding the Photoshop brush tool with a mouse, and have convinced myself that the resulting stick-people-wearing-clothes are appropriate for the stylized background paintings.

An illustration near the beginning of the graphic novel I’m writing 

Picking up where I left off...

 

Cover illustration for a Graphic Novel

Watercolour, Word™ Photoshop™ InDesign™

©2022 Charlene Brown

Since a horrible afternoon four days after my last blog post, on August 21 of last year, I have been overwhelmed by the sudden collapse, rapid decline and death of my elderly cousin who lived here in Victoria.  She was not my closest relative but I was hers, as she had no brothers, sisters or children.  Although she had several cousins, I was the only one living in Victoria.  Plus we were dear friends.

At first I was unable to write or paint anything I was so distracted by my ever-evolving responsibilities as her next-of-kin.  I did resume painting after a few months, but without much direction, and I have not written anything until now.

At this point I’m going to pick up where I left off on the unfinished projects in my 'Plan for 1150 Words in 2022' as if it had been written in January 2023.

Graphic Novel:  I have stylized some of my representational landscapes to use as backgrounds for the book’s illustrations.  People and conversation ‘balloons’ will be added to these stylized backgrounds.

Creative Archaeology:  I plan to re-interpret some of the photos and sketches I accumulated in past archaeology-related travel with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the University of Victoria travel study program, to continue the series ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’ working with what I have found to be the only truly portable plein air ‘painting’ kit.

Paint Every Mountain: I will begin compiling a small book about hiking and painting in mountains all over the world, equipped with the same plein air bag of crayons painting kit.

Predictive Analytics: I plan to continue a series which had 14 entries when I stopped writing a year ago.  I will emphasize extrapolating and visualizing (and painting) unanticipated outcomes.