Don Walls is 57 years old and blind. He has done sculpture and worked in pottery about 30 years ago. When sighted as a child, he loved to draw. One of his pictures, a drawing of the stone bridge in Beacon Hill Park, won a prize in Victoria's Painting In The Park summer program for children. Jeff East is 37 years old and sighted. He has done no previous artistic work for shows, but is skilled at carpentry and finished wood pieces. He enjoys working with his hands with wood and other materials. He is also experienced in sailing and other outdoor sports.

Experience Making This Piece:
Initially, we discussed various ideas - a mandala, a forest scene, an ocean scene, a bird - but settled on the idea of an orca whale. We went on the internet. Jeff printed photographs of orcas and we decided on a breaching orca. After some debate and turning the paper this way and that, we decided that the breaching orca needed the space of a vertical picture. Don experimented with a bird, various land shapes, waves, the idea of a sailboat in the distance, but in the end we decided to keep the picture simple and clean.

Tactile Colour Used: Fine gritty blue, griddded black, hard wavy brown and smooth white.

Tactile Description:
This is a very simple picture set on a very smooth white paper background which represents the sea. The gridded black orca is the focal point, and so one should start with it. The orca is the largest image in the middle of the picture, made from gridded black and smooth white. Below the orca's tail, you can then feel the fine gritty blue drops of water beneath which indicate the orca's leaping motion. Below the water drops and to the left is a hard wavy brown rock, perhaps part of a shoreline where the viewer would be standing. Above the orca are two thin shapes in hard wavy brown which are islands in the distance.

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