For me, the star attraction of Little Qualicum Falls on Vancouver Island was the three pools, each one different: one a sun-lit deep sea green, one a ‘black pool’ and the last a ‘shallow pool, clear’ with blue and ochre stones in the bottom.
(More paintings and sketches of the three pools.)
“Sunlit rocks like crumpled aluminum foil,” I wrote in my sketch book in September ’94.
Although I was there at the same time of year quite recently, the surrounding rocks looked quite different from what I remembered. Maybe it was the light? At any rate my camera has this ‘creative’ button on the dial that churns out five mostly bad images but this highly posterized one actually makes the rocks look like crumpled foil. This is at Nairn Falls, a completely different set of falls, but the rocks are more the way I remember them at Little Qualicum.
The wrinkled rocks along with the turquoise water, and surrounding forest.
Some photos of Qualicum Falls in motion run through Sketch Guru Gouache.

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