russianfareast

Russian Far East

Scratchboard and graphite

The first sighting of Wrangel Island came in the late afternoon. Cold and overcast, gray waves crashed upon a pebble beach. A sudden break in the cloud allowed sunlight to pour down onto the orange-brown treeless tundra that swept back from the beach in a succession of low hills to the tops of mountains capped in gray scudding clouds. Far away, a lone polar bear walked along the beach.

Journal entry from our second day

“The morning is cold and raw, half the group has decided not to brave the landing this morning. The ship is anchored quite a distance from the beach so the zodiac ride across the bay will be rough. The plan is to approach a headland where we will attempt a more sheltered landing. The wind is howling and as the zodiacs leave the lee of the ship the waves plunge and slam in to us, throwing a deluge of water over the rubber bow on to everyone.

I am so bundled up and wet that when I look up at the low headland and see a polar bear almost directly over head I find I am unable to extract my camera from by backpack. I watch unable to do more than remember with my mind’s eye. He is so close on the edge of the grass not twenty feet above us”.

I create my illustrations from the photographs I have taken on location but this was one photograph I was unable to take. Instead I have this great white bear etched in my mind. Sometimes it is perhaps better to just see with heart and mind rather than through the narrow aperture of a lens. I watched as he rose slowly to his feet, in the cold his breath was a faint mist. He sniffed the air, caught our scent and was gone, so quickly. I have pictured him so many times since this trip. And know the illustration that I want to create. The sun catching the landscape and the whole plane of treeless tundra is lit by an almost surreal light as the sun strikes the colors of the plants and the textural mosaic of dried mosses and lichen frozen by the wind to bleached gray. Short grasses blaze a burnt umber. Against this backdrop a great white bear stands sniffing the air, waiting and watching from the sea cliff.

Longing for the Ice

Whale Bone Alley

Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl Pair

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