Sometimes it's fun to just let go with the watercolour and see what happens. Watercolor is so magical. When I just splash it on it suggests more than I can imagine.

On my two week April watercolour workshop junket in northern BC, I had a wonderful tour of the Peace River Valley east from Fort St. John toward Hudson Hope. Workshop co-ordinator, tour guide and good friend, Sandy Troudt, knew all the best places to stop. We sat on the upper slopes of the river valley and sketched for an hour or so. As we worked, the valley floor rang with the sound of geese and swans stopped for a food break on the ice and river islets.

I worked, as I often do in outdoor situations, with my watercolour pencils and watersoluable graphite. I always love the spontaneous look of these sketches with colour tests and framing lines all included.

The bright coloured version is a workshop demo I did in Prince George working with randomly selected watercolour crayons using the colour boldly, looking for the big shapes and most meaningful tonal values. I like it!

Artwork NFS.

It always puzzles me that some folks find fault with watercolour 'blooms'... that's where the colour slides around in the water and dries darker on the edges... as in the area above the sails. I can't see the fuss myself. In many situations, especially if one is working outdoors on unstretched paper, 'blooms are inevitable. Not only inevitable but a clear indication one is working with watercolour. That's the magic of it... the part that I can't control, the part where the colour runs off and does it's own thing. This simple little watercolor is perfectly appealing for that reason.