I made six semi-transparent, speckle-texture colours inspired by Risograph prints. Riso art combines traditional stencils with new Risograph technology. The colours are printed one at a time (you know my mania for colour separations) and there is plenty of opportunity to get that 'missed register' look which I talked about in the litho printing process in the New Colourways entry a few weeks ago. I began with a simple ellipse, repeating the shape and overlapping to create many new colours from the original six. Above left is the original artwork which I like in its own right which became the repeat pattern at the top, on the right is a nice jiggly pattern which happened next which I like because quite by accident it resembles Asanti textiles. I also experimented with making a couple of colourful geometric artworks with an early Frank Stella feel. They were quick to make and attractive, but I didn't keep them, feeling at this point they were a distraction and lord knows I do enough dotting around. At the weekend I was browsing 1910-1930s textile designs and came across a lovely little off-cut of fabric from the Weiner Werkstatte (Vienna Workshop) at the weekend. It dated from around 1910 and was tiny, but I was able to reconstruct the pattern from the information that was there. Restoring old patterns or rebuilding them from a snippet is something I absolutely love to do, it's such a great feeling when it suddenly all comes together in repeat. I particularly love this period of design with its simple shapes, stylised natural forms and sombre tones, and being Scottish, the link between Vienna and the 'Glasgow Four' Art Nouveau work is very close to my heart - I grew up at school drawing everything in a hybrid Art Nouveau/1970s style. Pictured below is this weekend's restoration of that tiny scrap of fabric. I found quite a few other pieces from the Wiener Werkstatte, so there will probably be more to come! Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
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Welcome to my illustration and patterns blog.
I illustrate under the pen-name of Binky McKee, McKee being my mother's maiden name. Binky was the name of every single cat my great-grandmother kept - allegedly about 40 of them during her 94 years of life. I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the binkymckee. with weebly.com and it will work again. I hope you enjoy your visit! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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I keep lots of scrapbooks and sketchbooks where I develop ideas and design little creatures. Here's a peek inside one ...
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As you may know, I am also known as Heather Eliza Walker.
Click the image if you would like to find out more and visit my other website. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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March 2024
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This time, take a peek into my ceramic design sketchbook. I actually made some of the mugs, but I kind of prefer the drawings! The plate designs are painted on paper plates, a most liberating process.
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These watercolours are from my pattern sketchbook. I used coloured wax crayons to resist the washes of watercolour, also home-made rubber stamps dipped in bleach then printed on crêpe paper - the bleach takes out the paper dyes.
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A sketchbook I used for mark-making with unusual objects - corks, seed-heads, feathers, home-made rubber stamps, my fingers and lots of flicky things ...
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