I discovered my brother's collection of vintage ties in a plastic bag in the loft of our old family home a little while ago, and one tie really caught my attention. I reckon it's '60s or '70s, just my thing, so I began a drawing in Procreate based on what I could put together from the sliver of fabric which makes up the tie. I drew sections of what I could see and put them together in the image above, with some filler shapes which I tried to keep in harmony with the original. The next step was to create a repeat pattern, here's the tile. Then of course there was a lot of fun adding it to my Redbubble account. I was very happy with the results, it looks properly dandy and cheerful on the backpack (for some reason I am particularly fascinated with those, and the duffle bags, not to mention the socks!) I took great pains with the pattern tile, creating it in separate layers so I could change the colour for each, rather than just adjusting the colours of the whole tile. It's quite a long process because I do it the 'old fashioned' way in my now quite antiquated version of Procreate. I don't subscribe to Adobe anything any more, which means I don't have Photoshop now, so nothing is automated and the process is just like the hand-made method of cutting the original into four quarters and 'turning inside-out' (that's how I think of it). I repeat the process for each colour separation and it really provides wonderful clear results for every colourway. Perhaps I'm a bit of a dinosaur, but I prefer this way of working 'by hand', I feel more in touch with the design. I have made six colourways from the original. The advantage of doing it this way is that each colourway emphasises different aspects of the drawing with the use of tone as well as colour, which can't be done working with just a single layer tile. They can look like a completely different design as a result. I'll post some of them here soon! Thanks for visiting, see you next time! 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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