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.

We have so many friends whose birthdays fall between November and January that it has become an annual ritual to make birthday cards as soon as the Christmas cards are done, and it is free licence to mess about with every craft material in the studio (hem, spare room) plus anything I can purloin from B's shed. This year the hot glue gun came in extremely useful.
Looking at these birthday cards laid out together drying, I thought this would make a lovely pattern. It's been a while since I did some pattern-making, so that's something to look forward to for the new year, if not sooner.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

At the weekend I started the seasonal task of making this year’s Christmas cards. I got all the cutting, trimming and white painting done on Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday it was the more enjoyable job of adding faces to the snowmen and gluing on silver snowflakes and a fluffy scarf blowing out in the wind.
The process was considerably faster this year, thanks to B lending me his hot glue gun which made a huge difference. I usually dry the cards on all the upstairs radiators, and this year I found the fastest way to add details like the red noses was to arrange the cards on the radiators first, then apply the details in situ. It was good fun! I have rubber stamps on order for the greetings to go inside which should arrive tomorrow or Thursday. The idea is to finish making the cards, and then focus on work for Folktale Week.

Enough said! The prompts were released and I had such a load of fun making Staffordshire china cats announce them! I am very excited to start work on them, but of course they will not be shared until Folktale week begins on the 23rd of this month.

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

It's all about Folktale Week at the moment, even though it isn't happening for a month. The combination of Hallowe'en, folktales and spooky fairy tales is a heady one indeed for an illustrator, and the unearthly and the preternatural get into our work, often through the back door or creeping in from the edges. The prompts were released today but I haven't seen them yet. I plan on making an Instagram post on Wednesday or Thursday to share them. It's just such an exciting time, and unites the Instagram art community in a bubble of activity; people share and chat to one another like no other time of the year. I don't think the organisers realised how big it was going to be when they launched the first Folktale Week just three years ago, but well done to them for having such a wonderful idea! Please check out their Instagram profiles listed below:

@jennifermpotter @sofiamoore_studio @deborah.j.stein @nicallanart @laure_illustrations @rachaelschaferdesigns @debrastyer @louve.draws @matejalukezic        @thebrotherskent       @chelslarss       @tanja_stephani

And, as always - thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Yes! It's that time of year again - Folktale Week is approaching! After all the insecurity and doubt about my work last week, I made this image for Folktale Week, and it has been incredibly popular, tripling my likes and engagement on Instagram. It has had several shares, mentions and a repost. It only goes to show decisions about work should never be made in haste!​
Pictured below is the piece I was on the brink of tearing up and binning; thankfully something about it made me hesitate at the last minute, because I had it to work with for the Folktale Week announcement. It was great fun to do, and I enjoy lettering in monotype because you have to do it backwards and it comes out a bit wonky!

I have been working purely digitally for a while, which I love - but I always end up with a hankering for the human presence of the hand, and the alchemy of materials. Above is a watercolour from one of my sketchbooks, with wax resist and simple, free pen lines, which I made a while ago. I am very interested in designing patterns which could contain this freedom, I haven't figured it out yet, but it's something which has been going on in the background of my mind for over a year. Also, I haven't a clue which pen I used to worked on wax! It has bonded perfectly with the resist - experiments required (and possibly a lot of spoilt pens).

Above is a set of six little monotypes from the same sketchbook. I have always loved making monotype drawings. Using a glass plate rolled with printing ink or oil paint, paper is placed over the plate and I draw on the paper. It means when the paper is peeled away from the plate it reveals a mirror image of the drawing plus accidental smudges and textures. These surprises are exciting, and I use the technique both for illustration and in my Heather Eliza drawings.

This week I began to isolate sketches from my book (I did write about getting my jugs out and working with them, but NO, that's SO wrong!! Raised a few laughs on Instagram, though) . Here is a rudimentary something I put together as an experiment. The original monotype drawing was made on hand-made bark paper which supplies the lovely colour and texture for the fuzzy ink lines, cut out and placed over a digitally created linen-weave background. It may take a while, but I'll see where I go with this.

PS: I decided not to do Inktober on Instagram this year, I just have too many pots on the boil at the moment. I was tempted, but focus is required.