Back in January, I took a series of photos of deserted play parks in my home town. At the time I felt they had a poetic quality, abandoned in favour of a brand new super-swanky play area with amazing, creative equipment for children to explore, literally with bells and whistles. Reflecting now on these photos they seem premonitory, as the new super-swanky one today lies just as deserted following government advice to keep children away from play parks. The UK has been in official lockdown against the coronavirus for a week now.
As far as my work goes, it's business as usual, except there are no interruptions to try and avoid! It's very quiet outside. The birds sing clearly and the chestnut buds are swelling daily. I worked on the children's book illustrations, tidied up my Redbubble shop (focusing on greetings cards and postcards from my 100 cats project), and started work on an interesting pattern. Of course, the Heather Eliza drawings continue as well. I don't get out much at the best of times, so not much effort required here for lockdown! Thanks for visiting, stay safe, and see you next week On Thursday afternoon I took the dog for a walk and found the park teeming with school children, most unusual at that time of day. I walked past a group of very small children who had chalks and appeared to be drawing on the path. Their teacher was spelling out words for them, and I realised the little ones were writing greetings such as 'Hello Lovely' and 'You're beautiful', with a few spelling variations! I smiled and walked on, wondering what was going on;
The following afternoon B came with us on our walk, and I realised what had been going on. Every path in the park contained chalked messages of hope, encouragement, affirmations and joy. It was a wonderful thing to see and genuinely cheering. I don't know whose idea it was, but it was such a sweet thing to do in these troubling times and I thank them and the children for a beautiful project. I took my phone with me today to snap a few photos, I haven't really done it justice - these were all written on just one path, and it's challenging trying to hold a phone still with a greyhound skittering about on her lead. The schools are closed now, so I guess it was an 'end of term' project which brought everyone together in a positive light before all went their separate ways. Thanks for visiting, stay safe, and see you next week Sometimes it's hard to keep going when the news around the world keeps on getting worse. I have to say my work was plain old ornery this week and I achieved very little. However, some good things did happen to bring cheer; B's son (my godson) came to stay for the weekend with his friend in their fancy drift cars, which turned some heads. The energy of the young people was positive and the company most welcome. My very good friend had her birthday, too, and I made her the cute card above right which I liked.
I have wanted to draw the little plant mister above left for the longest time, so in the face of nothing else working I decided to give myself a treat and do it. I enjoyed it very much, I love its form and delicate little details and I decided not to clean it up too much, but to leave shivery lines here and there which seemed appropriate and expressive. Sometimes I feel when work feels stale and forced it's a good thing to have a break and do something just for oneself; it often injects something into the stuff that isn't working, bringing it back to life. I have a wonderfully wonky old candle stick which I might draw next. We celebrated B's 60th birthday on Wednesday, so I took 3 days off this week. Monday and Tuesday I set aside for baking, preparation and making him a special painted card/art piece. Wednesday itself was a lovely day of special foods, deliveries of gifts and balloons, and pampering B. Then it was back to normal on Thursday and Friday working on the children's book, but I found myself a bit short of blog and Instagram material to share. Normally I collect incidental bits and pieces from my illustrations and assemble them into a still life or pattern at the end of the working week, but I had nothing new I could share this time (although the illustrations are working beautifully! - watch this space). Luckily, I had started this still life in blue a few weeks ago, and all it needed was a pattern for the drapes to finish it. I had had plans for developing the pattern of ovals which I made at the beginning of February, so I worked on that today, and the still life was finished. Incidentally, I am most interested in patterns which have a block printed appearance at the moment (last week's post shows that, too). I was passionately in love with William Morris wallpapers and Indian printed textiles as a youngster in the 1970's, and it never really left me, but right now I am interested in fresh, simple shapes with lots of texture. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
It's March! To my mind, that mean it's now officially Spring, and March is coming in like a lion today with a big old blustery wind. I worked on my HEW website this week, and completed two more illustrations for the children's book before relaxing with this pattern put together from flowers which I made for one of them. I thought it had an appealing 1930s vintage look. I was particularly interested in the panel which resulted when I turned the original drawing 'inside out' to create the pattern fill - perhaps a nice scarf design to think about?
Happy Spring! 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.
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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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