Coloring Winds

In my last post, I mentioned that I was stuck on a part of Winds of Color. I'd been working the sections of the design in the order they showed up in the instructions (in case you were wondering why I was jumping around so much). After I finished the areas of underside couching (areas 11, 11a, 12), I read ahead a bit.

The instructions for area 14 say something about "the greyed areas of the canvas". Ummm... my area 14 isn't shaded at all. Ok, how about 14a: "area is painted in a very dark tone". Mine must be a very dark white!

There's an explanation for this. This was originally designed as a teaching piece, and part of the class time was designated for coloring areas of the canvas. When I ordered it, many years after it was originally taught, the canvas came colored already, but apparently a couple of areas were missed. Unfortunately, the instructions didn't provide details for the "permanent marking pens" called out on the materials page. I emailed Elsa Parrish, the designer.

In the meantime, I stitched a bit on areas of the sky. Here are areas 16 (dark blue) and 16a (lavender), both done in open versions of encroaching gobelin. I also started area 18, the background sky, stitched in a darning stitch.














It turned out that Ms. Parrish replied very promptly to tell me the type of marker (Prismacolor) and the colors I needed. Yesterday, I took my canvas to a local art store. The store didn't have the complete line of Prismacolor pens, but I was able to find colors that were fairly close to the originals. When I got home, I very carefully colored in the areas (area 14a was particularly tough, since it was completely surrounded by stitching), and managed to get just a minimal amount of ink on the surrounding threads. (I figure that will help the areas blend better. :-P )
I also put a very light layer of the navy color on top of the existing mottling of area 17. I had tried to start that area, but it's a very open stitch, and the white was just too stark. I'm also thinking of taking out the darning stitches in the sky and trying to darken that area a bit. What do you think?