Is there a touch of spring in the air? Wishful thinking perhaps, but sunrise is now 10 minutes earlier than before the solstice, and sunset a good half hour later. Burn’s night is a mere week away, a significant day-changer as the northern hemisphere gains 5 minutes more daylight, adding extra minutes at each end of every day towards the brightness of Valentine’s, Candlemas, and heading for the spring solstice. Even now the long shadows resemble sundials rather than dark hollows, snow and ice have melted away under the strengthening sun (for the time being, anyway) and the pace is beginning to quicken as little birds chirp, snowdrops bloom and daffodils in green hoods shoot from the earth. The prettiest crescent moon in the southwestern skies is a benign sickle of hope.
Yesterday on our daily walk in the park we saw all our fellow dog walkers at once, taking advantage of the goodness of the midday sun, tails wagging joyfully as they greeted one another enthusiastically with a sniff on the bum. That is the dogs, not the walkers, to be clear; we humans are carefully socially distanced as becomes the British at the best of times, never mind during a pandemic. It all inspired this illustration of a ridiculously jolly Sunday’s Child: “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny, and blithe, and good, and gay”. Stay gay, my friends! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Comments are closed.
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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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April 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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