WDE October 15 - 17 IMAGES ARE HERE!!!

[Jakesgram]

Hi to all my artsy friends! Hope you are ready for our scenic tour / cruise through the Pacific regions of the US Northwest, Canada, and US - Alaska. I’m so happy to welcome as I revisit wonderful memories and photos from my trip to Alaska in May, 2010.

Along with 3 friends, I traveled to Vancouver after a brief over-night stay in Seattle. Two days later, we boarded the Pacific Princess for a lovely 7 night cruise up the coast of Alaska, including port calls in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway and 2 days cruising Glacier Bay and College Fjord. The invitation photo was taken as we exited the College Fjord area.

Following the cruise, we had a 3-day land tour, which took us by rail into the awe-inspiring Denali National Park.

I will be posting 16 images and an optional challenge.

Please wait until all are uploaded before commenting - thank you.

The original intent for the WDE was for everyone to start at the same time and stop and post after 2 hours. However, over time, the guidelines have broadened to allow people to work when they are able over the course of the week following the posting of the pictures. At this time, the important guidelines are:

• Choose 1 or more images and use any medium(s) you like. Then just go for it!!!

• It's great if you can scan or photograph your work after 2 hours, but then you may continue working if you are not finished.

• Post your images in your own new thread with your title, beginning with “WDE, date, title of the work.”

• When you introduce your work, please add a description of size, medium, support (paper, canvas etc) and time taken.

• If your work is digital, we'd appreciate a description of whether it's freehand drawing/painting, manipulated image or done using the filters available in some programs - you could also say which program you've used. All are acceptable but we'd like to know the "hows, whys and wherefors"

• In the Title line of your post, use WIP for any work in progress at the 2 hour mark, and MI for multiple images if you plan to add more pieces to this thread.

• NB. To avoid forum flooding, please put all of your work during the weekend, for the current WDE, into a single thread: multiple threads will be merged!

• From the following TUESDAY, you may open a new thread for later work.

You have the whole week to participate - until the next WDE starts (usually Friday). If you finish a piece after that time, we now run a 'Catch-up' thread in the forum each month where you can post any WDE not completed in its allotted week .... it's a sticky near the top of the forum page.

After posting your contribution, please view others’ entries and comment and encourage when you can. Unless requested, please refrain from critiquing.

Now, let's pack our bags and wish each other Bon Voyage!

Number 1: Seattle Farmer’s Market. Across the street from this is the original Starbucks store. Unfortunately, I had to drop that photo out of the lineup!!! 8*(



Number 2: Also from Seattle, this is a sort of “still life” taken inside the Farmer’s Market. For the record, as real as he looks, our little reptile friend is NOT real, but he sure does catch the eye!



Number 3: Cute raccoon in Stanley Park in Vancouver. He was clearly “in residence” near the refreshment area, as we saw him there on two different days.



Number 4: Totem Poles in Vancouver’s Stanley Park





Stay tuned! More images to follow.

Jean

[Jakesgram]

Number 5: Azaleas at the Van Duessen Garden in Vancouver. We barely discovered this beautiful botanical garden in time to see it. It is not as well publicized as some of the other major attractions in Vancouver, but we were so thankful we stumbled onto it. Well worth the time spent there.



Number 6: Tulips in Stanley Park - Vancouver.



Number 7: Ice chunk floating in the water near the Mendenhall Glacier. I’m calling this an ice “still life.”



Number 8: View from amazing suspension bridge we saw on our trip up the Yukon Highway to British Columbia.



Number 9: Brenda was our tour guide at the Jewel Tea Garden in Skagway. Much smaller than the Van Duessen, but we had a lovely home-cooked lunch followed by an interesting tour around the gardens and the glass blowing studio that is on-site.



Number 10: Living History – this was an old mining cabin that is now staffed by a park employee playing the role of the person who lived there in the 1930’s.

[Jakesgram]

Number 11: Train cars on the adjacent tracks as we rode the glass domed sightseeing railway cars to Mt. McKinley and Denali National Park.



Number 12: Evening clouds near Mt. McKinley



Number 13: This is Bill, a member of the Indian Tribe that populates the Denali Park area. Bill spoke to us at length about the life of his people and the effects of the changes brought by settlers. It was quite an interesting talk, but I could not take my eyes off the beautiful beadwork on his vest and his necklace.



Number 14: Back-country, Denali National Park. The back country is beautiful, powerful wilderness – it is awe-inspiring to visit there.



Number 15: Shoeshoe Bunny, spotted near the miner’s cabin inside Denali Park.



Number 16: Another raft party spotted on our float trip down the Talkeetna River.




Optional Challenge: If you want to do a challenge piece, in some way, step away from depicting the subject realistically. Approach your work creatively instead of trying to reproduce exactly what you see in the photo. For example, you could do any of the following:

· Do the piece in unusual colors
· Do a mixed-media piece that includes collage
· Crop in a very unusual way
· Turn the work into an abstract
· See and paint an image in the clouds or the ice or the trees
· Rearrange objects or add an object to a background from the photo
· Or whatever else your imagination can come up with

NOTE: if you want high resolution photos, let me know by PM which ones you want and I will forward them to you.

Most important rule: HAVE FUN!!!

Jean

[Vivien Maloney]

Jean - Wonderful photos! Thank you so much for posting early, it's much appreciated.

[Jakesgram]

You're very welcome Viv. Have fun. Hope to see what you've done when I get up in the morning.

Jean

[eyepaint]

Yay!

[missswiss]

Great pictures. I have a couple I want to try tomorrow if I can find the time. If not will try and get at least one done before week-end is over. Thanks for hosting and hope you have a great time doing it.

[connievanwinssen]

Lovely photos! Thanks

[sundiver]

Outstanding!

[artastic]

what gorgeous photos Jean, can't wait to get started! but work comes first (but not in my )

[justjean]

Thanks for the great photos Jean

Jean

[Scattykat]

phabeweluss fotoes...sooper challengies...

[oldrockchick]

Thank thank you so much for posting early so I can do some work today (Friday) as I'm going out tonight. It's so cool I might manage to get a few done.

That iguana on the fruit will be just perfect for me to try out my new set of Faber Castell Eco Water Soluble pencils. Only have 24 so might sub with Inktense, Inktense work slightly differently too and don't relift so can use layers.

I have some beautiful bright colours I'll be ablke to use.

I LOVE the Canadian landscapes

I believe some of the Stargate SG-1 episodes were filmed in Stanley Park Vancouver. In fact that is where they are made. Amanda Tapping & Michael Shanks are Canadian .. well strictly speaking Amanda is Brisith as she was born in Essex.....

[Signchick]

Jean, this is an amazing selection of photos! I am anxious to see if anyone is brave enough to take on that ice!

Have fun hosting! We appreciate you doing it for us!

[Skylar10]

What a wealth of imagry from which to draw! This will be exciting. I already know I will have to do more than one!!