This is an interpretive / impressionist sketch. I may have adjusted the colors a bit much in Lightroom. I did this at 6:30 a.m., barely awake, and without any light except what broke through yonder window. Same with the scan. I’ll check it out later today, when I am at work or something. Interesting to see the white spots in the scan I cannot see in my gloomy room . . . .
Last night I was getting ready for bed and decided to just do a quick drawing of something – anything! – before hitting the hay. My camera caught my eye. Instead of being blue, it is really black, and the strap is black, and it was on a copy of something in black and white. Strong shadows, too, from a lamp on the desk. What the hell . . . just do it and then paint it. As I like the effects of lines – Sailor’s Carbon Ink in a fountain pen – I decided to just use primaries, and blue was the choice for the strap, red and blue (i.e. violet) for the strap, a green for the rest of it. I wanted to catch the shadows – the light and the dark – more than anything. And here we are, half asleep while doing it.
I have been playing with iron gall ink, in this case McCaffery’s. Iron gall ink is easy to make and is the traditional ink over the centuries. It is waterproof, but with age turns the sepia so often affiliated with old manuscripts and drawings. I was playing with my goose quill pen, and a steel nib pen as well, working on calligraphy, when I decided to try it in a sketchbook. Given how busy I was this weekend, this is all I could accomplish, but I will say that the ink held up beautifully as the watercolors were added after the drawing.
This weekend was a very busy one as we cleaned out things, such as old computers (taken to an e-waste recycling place), sold a bunch of books, and finally hit the stash of yarn and spinning fleece in the garage. From 45 boxes, I am down to 22 with yarn and fleece. Some things were thrown out – such as a bag with a big, black spider, most likely a black widow. Other things were boxed up so my MIL could come and take what she wanted. The rest is going to be delivered to a local senior center where they use donated yarn for charity work, or they can just take yarn home for fun – not everyone has a big income, and yarn can be a luxury.
Oddly enough, going through everything didn’t take that long. I think I spent about 6 hours at the most. It was easy to choose, too. Nearly anything that was unfinished was cut off the ball of yarn, discarded, and the yarn ball put into the “to be donated” bin(s). Tacky or sticky or scratchy fleece was discarded as not worthwhile. All balls of handspun yarn were saved, regardless as to length, unless they didn’t feel good to touch.
And in the middle of this, I have a sweater that has been sitting in the knitting pile for some time. It is a cardigan, but I decided to try steeking with it. Well, that fell by the wayside. I ripped out the entire sweater, re-balled the yarn, and started over. Much happier, even though purling is not my favorite knitting stitch.
I restarted the sweater, an Icelandic pattern, and have done a few inches. I think this will be my night knitting, when we are watching TV. The lower edge, as with most Icelandic sweaters, is a patterned border, but the main body a plain color. Instead of using Icelandic wool roving, which pills and is too itchy for me, I am using an acrylic yarn with a bit of halo. Yeah, not the most sophisticated of yarn choices in a “natural” world, but for me, right now, it is perfect. I need a cardigan – and one with as little sewing as possible! I hate sewing things together, and never finish anything that requires too much of it.
It feels good to have a knitting project on hand again.
I’ve been rather busy painting and drawing, and keep meaning to get out the camera along with the pen and ink and colors and paper. As well as that, I keep looking for things to draw, and this is where having about 20 years of digital photos is pretty nice – and rather overwhelming! Looking for things to draw prompted me to look through my work. Some is good, some is bad, as in any creative hobby! Success varies and ideas of success vary with the time of viewing.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 