I would never have considered myself a political person. Though I have my opinions, I have never enjoyed engaging in dinner time political banter. I think of myself as an ordinary citizen with some common sense and an average idea of what's going on in the world, but as it turns out, I am perhaps more engaged than I thought I was. I never followed the US elections closely until crunch time because like most, I thought Hillary was a shoo-in and Trump would be laughed out. Then, it was just the two of them and though I believed this to be a comedic farce taken too far, I couldn't believe it had come down to the two of them. I wasn't a huge Hillary fan, but if I had to choose who would run the supercountry of the USA, common sense tells me that the person with prior political experience would be the best choice. If I needed open heart surgery, would I choose the person with the MD or someone whose ONLY prior experience is with the game "Operation"?
As a Canadian, our countries are very close, but I cannot imagine being an American in such an uncertain time. I only hope that we are all wrong and that things really won't be as bad as we think they will be. Now, it is Remembrance Day and the timing just makes this week feel a little more emotional. I have done poppies quite a bit, so this year I decided to remember fallen soldier, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was shot and killed in the attack at Parliament Hill in 2014. This event struck a chord with many Canadians and that week praised Chronicle Herald cartoonist, Bruce Mackinnon, drew two pivotal political cartoons that made me cry. The first being this one and the second being the one below highlighting how Canada deals with tragedy. As you can see, the latter is what I chose to recreate though I had to pick and choose my favourite squares to showcase.
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| Credit: Bruce Mackinnon |
This took about 1.25 hours to draw, but I think it turned out alright! I started off by painting my nails two coats of OPI Infinite Shine-Non Stop White*, followed by a sponged-on gradient of OPI Infinite Shine - To Be Continued...* to mimic the background of the cartoon squares. I wanted each nail to represent a square so I then outlined each nail with black acrylic paint and started sketching out the nozzle of the gun and shading with quick strokes of white acrylic paint. The maple leaves were probably the hardest to draw, but I took some creative license with them and hopefully they still look like maple leaves! I used a matte top coat to symbolize the look of paper and a loooong time later, I was done.
Have a moment of silence today for the fallen, for what's happened this week and remember that there is always hope.
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