Well, this totally sorted out my problem with the ponies. I found the original texture I used in Yellow Bear and overlaid a clipping mask on the ponies drawings. It's interesting to see the clip mask applied to the first brush drawings of the ponies. I know it is very close-toned and painterly, but I'm much happier with this result.
Odd how things develop sometimes - it must be a mood thing. By the way, I'm reworking the leaping doggie/faun creature avatar I was using prior to the birdy one in temporary use at the moment - watch this space. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A pony emerged from the photos of crumpled up leaves on the pavement I took a couple of weeks ago, and quickly turned into three ponies in a field. At first I had them standing on a speckled green background, great colour combination, but it wasn't gelling particularly well with me. To be absolutely honest, I wasn't really feeling it at first and found it difficult to get into this. It was rather disappointing, because I had been looking forward to allocating some time to making some pareidolia drawings again; I had been going so strongly with it last time and having a lot of fun on a roll with it. Perhaps the new photos didn't inspire the same creative charge, or perhaps it was because at first I couldn't remember which Procreate brushes I had been using which made it all look a bit wrong. Maybe my mood wasn't the same as before, which I think may have been the most likely explanation, as I found my thoughts being drawn towards this little illustration of a yellow bear I made four years ago. I never did anything with this work, I didn't post it anywhere, just quickly named it Yellow Bear, filed it away out of sight, and forgot about it. I found it unsettling at the time and had to force myself not to delete it. This was probably because at the time I was heavily into developing a way to make patterns without automated software on my iPad, and this bear staring out at me lit by flashlight suddenly came out of nowhere. I remember it happening at around 5am on a cold, dark March morning (it almost created itself) and it sort of scared me - these things happen, all part of the creative process.
I discovered I still had the bear illustration a couple of years later, after I had forgotten all about it. I have taken the odd look at it now and again since, and wondered why I had almost discarded it. Maybe I just wasn't ready at the time, confused by the different ideas which emerged in the work, and simply taking myself too seriously. Today I'm so glad I didn't delete it, because now I have decided I really like my stary yellow bear and sought it out for inspiration this week. It wasn't until I set the ponies on the same background as I used for the bear that something began to happen and they came to life; I'm now thinking that instead of the crayon-like drawing style I was using previously for pareidolia drawings I might prefer to work in the same way as I made the bear. It would be quite a different approach to making pareidolia images, perhaps more in line with my feelings at the moment. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! On Thursday morning my breath was taken away as I drove over the crest of a hill to be greeted by the sight of the moon, rising in the valley of the River Forth beneath me. A sliver of pink sickle was hovered just above the horizon in a sky of red gradient which moved upwards to deep blue, just like a Japanese woodcut. It was the last moon before it became new on Friday. It's good to see daylight approaching earlier by the day now, and to hear the birds waking up with small twootling and peeping sounds just before daybreak.
I had been working on this version of Misguided Star in warm browns during the week, and just had to somehow work in all that beauty. PS: I know, the moon's facing the wrong way for the new moon - it just looks better in the composition this way round! Thanks for visiting, see you next week Gradually, bit by bit, I have been adding to this illustration and appreciating its details. I have worked a version to make a 4-part Instagram post making use of them which I will be posting soon, but before then I want to brighten up my profile page with a few brighter images. However, it has been challenging trying to do much work during this week's cold snap. I showed photos and wrote about our ice-scaped windows (the fanciest in town!) on my Heather Eliza blog, but didn't mention some of the other issues. It was so cold in the house our devices stopped charging and nothing would work until we put them all on hot water bottles. It took so long scraping and defrosting the car in the early mornings that I lost what is often my best part of the day to squeeze in a little artwork, even if my devices had been working; and the need for hot food before going out at 7.15am took a lot of extra time. B was a marvellous help with it all, making sure my flask was filled with hot soup and my stewed fruit didn't burn while defrosting the car - it has been a week of getting up at an unearthly hour every dark morning and racing to get dressed before getting paralysed by the cold!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I find it amusing to make up pub names by putting incongruous nouns together. It's like a kind of haiku, except minus a lot of syllables! Bee & Thurlestone sounds like a good one - would this be a good design for its signboard, I wonder?
Normally, of course, at this time of year I would be blogging about making Christmas cards etc, but I'm not doing that this year. I have blogged a bit about that - and also about my day job if you are interested in that, over at Heather Eliza's site today, so I am just sharing another spread from my book here for now. This one is for two ditties. This is the one for Thurlestone Rock: If Thurlestone Rock should ever block And everything go solid There'd be no arch where winkles march 'Twould really be quite horrid. One of my favourites! I haven't got anything organised for Christmas yet - must get a move on with that ... Work in progress. Based on the original sketch in the previous entry, this is as far as I have managed to get so far. I have reinterpreted the curly tree, but there has to be room in the illustration for the text, and I have to work out how to express the festoons in the night sky which frightened the elves ... watch this space to see where it goes.
This is the original sketch for Wayney Stars, made such a long time ago I can't remember when exactly how it began. I am having some difficulty in interpreting this in my current way of working, while preserving its intrinsic properties - it's a case of Keep Going.
The ditty reads: The wayney stars without a moon Did it by themselves They lit the sky with great festoons And frightened all the elves Not a lot of progress to report, as I am on a training course which entered its 7th week of 8. It has been super intense, leaving me too tired in the evenings to get a lot of work done. The course is absolutely amazing, though, and I am thoroughly enjoying it: so far I have had 2 weeks induction which included energy use, health and safety in the workplace, information about supported businesses, and employability skills. This was followed by the practical sections which have been an absolute ball for me: upholstery, sewing using commercial machines (much stronger, faster, and more powerful than my domestic sewing machine), woodwork, office work (including my nemesis, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets), out on the vans for deliveries and collections, and refurbishment of equipment used by hospitals and care homes across Fife, Edinburgh and Glasgow. But it's taking its toll, and I realise I have to build up my strength. I slept nearly 12 hours solid last night.
Anyway, here is the progress on my latest illustration for Misguided Star, a ditty I composed back in 2008. I dimmed down some of the stars to highlight one on the left side, the misguided one, and worked on the tree with star-shaped leaves on the right which will form a double spread for Stars Scare Elves, another ditty from the same year. Work in progress this week, for my book of terrible ditties: a tree with twinkly stars rocking in its branches, based on the original drawing shown below which I simply cannot believe was made in 2008! It is still so recent in my mind. I wrote the ditty it illustrates then, too. Really, other events from that time seem like ages ago, but the work itself still feels fresh.
Time warp! Some lovely slices of rich colour in this illustration for 'Square Squirrels', a ditty about round robins and squirrels and what they get up to in the spring. This was the second illustration I made for my book of verses, and was begun at the beginning of July.
I'm glad I saved these images to post and talk now, having finished the drawings for the Open Eye Gallery, as it is helping to ease me back into work on the book and whetting my appetite to get on with new illustrations. Marrow, marrow, glorious marrow
Much larger than the courgette Don't store in the dairy for it may grow hairy And then it could never be ate A taster from my book of dreadful ditties and dodgy doggerels. 'Ate' rhyming with 'courgette'? definitely dodgy. There are two verses to accompany this illustration I made during August, but I won't trouble you with the second right now, it could be a spoiler and who knows, you may just want to buy the book! I am very happy with the flatness, patterns and the curly lettering I devised for this one. It resembles a 1950s cookery book, and the jaunty comedy of the drawing sets the perfect mood for the verses. There will be a few more of these tasters coming up here while I am working on drawings for Edinburgh's Open Eye Gallery. Their Christmas exhibition On a Small Scale opens in November and the handing-in deadline is coming up fast, so the focus is on that at the moment. The works can be seen on my Heather Eliza website, slide off over there if you would like to view. I set aside the illustrations for my new book for a while. There are two reasons for this; one, I like to be absolutely sure I'm on the right tracks; two, I have been saving them to make Big Sixes for Instagram and to use here on this blog - handy for posts while I am making work for the Open Eye Gallery's Christmas exhibition in Edinburgh, which can be seen on my Heather Eliza blog here.
This was the first illustration I began in early July this year. I am planning to use it for a 'Big 6' on Instagram. This town. Viewed through a disused railway bridge, I particularly enjoyed the cyclist above the houses entwined with vines - there is such a scene close by to where I live.
Autumn is arriving with all its fragrances: piles of fallen leaves and bonfires. I celebrate the calm and quiet of the new season in this work depicting a walled garden and a fancy gate.
New drawing finished today: the politics of toys. All the things that go on behind the backs of humans ... ... and an illustration I have been working this week. I wrote about the development of ideas which led to this image on my Heather Eliza blog. It is a detail of an illustration in my latest book, which of course is a deadly secret for the time being, but I can say for now that these are burst tubular bells falling from heaven as a result of a biblical party. I wrote the ditty which accompanies it years ago, but it still makes me laugh out loud every time I read it! That can't be too bad, can it?
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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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