Life's a Stitch

Twelve and a half years of blogging, I've never ventured to the political side. OK, except when I commented that the Vancouver 2010 Olympics usurped funds from social services. Lost a reader that time. I'll take a risk by voicing my opinion on the antics south of our border. It boils down to behaviour. I would hope that a person elected to lead a country, at the very least, would possess some degree of natural diplomacy. 

I wake up each morning to Radio CBC. You know how your ears wake up before your eyes? I find myself all warm and cozy in my comforter, eyes still shut, listening to the tone of voice of radio announcers Rick Cluff and Amy Bell, trying to detect any inflection of disaster. Ugh.

And some political knitting content: I was amazed when I read a proprietor of a U.S. yarn shop refused to sell pink yarn to knitters of Pussy Hats, saying "the vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable." 

End of rant.

Back to the usual stuff, and this also relates to knitting in a way. Committed to watercolour, I tried acrylic paint several times to no avail. Just couldn't get the hang of it. Wanting something more compact than paint, I took an online course in Mixed Media with Robert Kogge – coloured pencils and ink wash on canvas and I liked the way it looked. It's consistent with what draws me to knitting – a mixture of texture and colour.

It's also quite portable, not requiring the brushes, tubes and water of paint. On our first Camino I walked 500 miles with 13 ounces of watercolour supplies and never used them. I'll have to weigh a few small pieces of primed canvas, a limited selection of coloured pencils (leaving the final ink wash for when we get home), for our next pilgrimage. 

There are five steps: priming the canvas, a tonal drawing followed by a version with coloured pencils, an ink wash, and touch ups with the pencils. My first project is still in the tonal drawing phase as it is on the complicated side:

Walking through an art supply store I saw primed burlap and picked up a small panel to experiment with this technique. My Palm Springs area watercolour teacher has been encouraging us to paint potatoes in a brown paper bag. Each time the students reject the suggestion opting for prettier roses or palm trees. But burlap seemed to lend itself to the brown subject matter. What it lacks in colour is gained in texture: