A very Merry Christmas to all!
It's probably not what you had planned, being a bit of a strange one this year - Christmas in second lockdown for at least 3 weeks from midnight onwards. What will become of Hogmanay? Goodness knows what that will be like! Probably not that different for me, I always struggle to stay up until midnight, to be honest, and I haven't been into the revels of New Year since my early twenties. Perhaps this year I will manage to sneak off to bed with a hot water bottle before midnight, although knowing me I will most likely suddenly decide to stay up this year, just because I don't have to - bring on Jools Holland's Hootennany, hurrah!
If you have had to change your plans and miss all the company normally associated with this time of year, I do hope you are making the best of it and finding something to rejoice in. Giant Toblerone, anyone?
Here is a cheery festive animation of Cat annoying Dog having eaten too much chocolate! - yes, I did finally manage to work out how to post a GIF here. As usual I was overthinking it and it turned out to be very simple in the end.

I wish everyone a very Happy 2021.
​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I don't know what happened to this week's post, I had so much I was going to write about and simply ran out of time. Here is Courtship, day 3 of Folktale Week - a pair of Wally Dugs, in a mantlepiece romance! Maybe later I will update with some interesting facts about Wally Dugs, but in the mean time, as always - 

Thanks for visiting, and see you next week!

Ritual was prompt no.2 in Folktale Week. My contribution was a comical sect of Staffordshire cats, with a nervous new recruit second right. I wrote this paragraph to accompany it:

When the first flurry of the season began, the Secret Society of Worshippers of Snow donned their magnificent crystal caps and gathered in the Castle. They climbed a lot of stairs by candlelight and made their way along the north passage, which came to an abrupt end at a very big and important looking wooden door. There was a small doorbell at the side which the leader pressed. “Ding-dong” it innocently chimed, and the door swung open to reveal a long, thin stone pavement suspended in mid-air, spanning a ghastly ravine plunged in darkness. Heavy drapes lined each side which did nothing to assuage the terrors inspired by the infinite drop below their feet and worse soaring above their heads, but cross the void they must to reach the Chamber of Ice where the ritual took place every year.

I got excited this week when I got to grips, at long last, with Instagram Stories. Thanks to Folktale Week I found it necessary to understand how to work the format, got the hang of it (eventually) and loved it - I have found a lovely place for my animations! I spent a few hours working out how best to export mini videos made in Procreate for my stories as well as posts on @binky_mckee .

Folktale Week 2020 has just finished, the most enjoyable week on Instagram. People are just so talented it blows me away! Different artists’ interpretations of the prompts were so unique, original and personal I felt quite daunted, if I’m honest - and proud to be involved. For the next few weeks I’ll share the illustrations I submitted here on The Weekly.
This year’s FW began, appropriately, with the prompt Birth; after much thought, I decided to make an illustration of a birth commemoration plate for a kitten. I chose a kitten because of the cat themes running through my work, and of course the name ‘Binky’ being that of all my great-grandmother’s cats. Based on by my own birthday plate (quite vintage now, ahem) I also sought inspiration from contemporary British and international ceramics, having studied ceramics in London for four years; plus, of course, I see so many beautiful examples on show whenever I visit the galleries in Edinburgh.