The three little kittens, they lost their mittens, And they began to cry, "Oh, mother dear, we sadly fear, That we have lost our mittens." "What! - lost your mittens, you naughty kittens! Then you shall have no pie." "Meow, meow, meow." "Then you shall have no pie." The three little kittens, they found their mittens, And they began to cry, "Oh, mother dear, see here, see here, For we have found our mittens." "Put on your mittens, you silly kittens, And you shall have some pie." "Purr, purr, purr, Oh, let us have some pie." The three little kittens put on their mittens, And soon ate up the pie, "Oh, mother dear, we greatly fear, That we have soiled our mittens." "What, soiled your mittens, you naughty kittens!" Then they began to sigh, "Meow, meow, meow," Then they began to sigh. The three little kittens, they washed their mittens, And hung them out to dry, "Oh, mother dear, do you not hear, That we have washed our mittens?" "What, washed your mittens, then you're good kittens, But I smell a rat close by." "Meow, meow, meow, We smell a rat close by." The Three Little Kittens from the Mother Goose Collection (poem usually attributed to early 19th century American poet Eliza Lee Cabot Follen).
I so much enjoyed working on these as part of my 100 days of cats project. I wouldn't have thought of it, but it was suggested by a fellow Instagrammer, Karen Edward. Please visit her website here, and if you are ever in the beautiful East Neuk of Scotland you must visit Funky Scottish, her café and gallery! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Funky Scottish 41 High Street, Anstruther, Fife Cakes, coffee, tasty lunches and beautifully made arts and crafts Cats, cats and more cats! I am over a quarter of the way through my 100 Days Project. These scans of booklet No.2 show the (very) hand-made nature of the paper, my stitching, and the way I am working. I discovered this week that if I am using watercolours on this paper, which is very absorbent, I need to double up the pages to prevent bleeding through to drawings on the flip sides. I glued extra pages into the booklet to compensate, and now I am enjoying using watercolour freely. Some very sneaky cats and a cat burglar came out of this week! So far the pages in this booklet have been in order, but they are now out of sequence. I number each drawing as it is finished (rather than by page number) and sometimes I get stuck and move on to a new drawing while I am thinking about how to resolve a problem with an earlier one; these drawings do not appear consecutively in the booklet, but go 24, 25, 29, 30, 26, 27 because drawing no.29 (which was going to be no.26) gave me a few problems which took a couple of days to work out, and in the mean time I finished the other two. 29 was worth the extra time and thought, and it turned out to be a big favourite! I am loving that followers on Instagram are suggesting cats they would like to see, also my beloved B is now constantly thinking up new ideas! It's all much appreciated and very exciting.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Booklet 2 begins, bursting with potential for the next 20 cats in my 100 Days Project. I love starting a new sketchbook, who knows what journeys will be explored on those blank pages ... this one is beginning by taking up themes which interested me the most from the first booklet: two-tone patterns, you could say these are ska cats! I hope to fill them with musical joy. I am also looking forward to intertwining more plants and vines around the cats I am looking forward to meeting as the journey unfolds.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A selection of 6 cats, in no particular order, from my 100 days project which is going well. I will complete the first booklet’s posts on Instagram next week - I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone! I am getting so much joy and inspiration from it, it is amazing how doing 100 of something benefits work all round, and I am only a fifth through. I hope it continues as creatively. The patterned mosaics and mats I have been drawing with the cats became a source of great interest to me. After a drive through the old fishing villages along the Fife coast one day, I began drawing them combined with buildings inspired by East Neuk architecture on a large sheet of paper. Experiments with scanning and placing elements from the drawing together proved so exciting I am now giving my online shop a complete overhaul full of new ideas. There isn’t much to see yet, but I will post a link when there is enough to toot my horn about!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! It’s all about the #100daysproject on Instagram this week. I am loving other people's projects, producing exciting work during the 100 days and resulting in fascinating collections. Inspired by this, I decided to join and do my project with cats. The open notebook pictured above shows the first two cats, and illustrates my intention to make 5 booklets of 20 pages each and work through the booklets until they are all complete and I have 100 cats. Below are the cats which followed on each day of the week. I don’t know what will happen during the project, I can’t even imagine at the moment what it will be like when I have made 50 cats, or 75! The only time I have made 100 of anything is when I have made a run with rubber stamps or linocuts, or multiples for Christmas cards; those are very much the same but different each time. I am hoping that by the time I have created 100 cats, my cat style will have developed into something unique, and I always love a few surprises on the way!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! The chestnut trees outside my window are fruiting! Summer is progressing, and it won’t be long until it is conker season once more. The blossoms have given way to tiny, pale green fruits which I can see growing bigger by the day. Curious to get a closer look, I spent some time squinting up at the trees (I used to climb them as a youngster!) I found some young, underdeveloped nuts fallen in the grass which look a bit like plums, sporting tiny bumps on their skin where spikes would grow. I know it’s a well-trodden path, but I’m in awe that these tiny, encapsulated nuggets put down roots and simultaneously shoot sprouts into the air which grow into enormous beings with a lifespan far longer than we humans.
Coincidentally, I am working at the opposite end of the chestnut cycle in my drawings over at The Weekly on my HEW website, drawing chestnuts which had begun to root and sprout, but perished and shrivelled up. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I am having a mini-sketchbook binge! Here are some I made previously. I love making pocket-sized booklets. At the moment I am making five consisting of 5 sheets, folded and simply stitched together in the centre with carpet thread (I’m not going to impress anybody with my bookbinding skills here) using Thai Mulberry paper. I have already started with some cat cutouts I made last week, enjoying pasting them onto pages and working them with watercolour and pen. It's a relaxed and free way to develop ideas, and I enjoy the mix of line and textures. This photo shows work in progress: this gives some idea of scale. It's Minnie, my neighbour's cat, rolling around in the garden - as she does!
I am beginning to turn over the idea of doing the 100 Days Project on Instagram with cat drawings. It's a great way to develop work, and I have been most inspired by other artists' 100 days - hence the 5 booklets consisting of 20 pages. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! PS: If you were here earlier in the week, you may have noticed I replaced an image of works in progress with a photo of all my lovely handmade sketchbooks. I have been wanting to show these sketchbooks for ages - and I don't want to give too much away before I start on the #100daysproject! Watch this space! I spent two days cleaning up my Easter weekend sketchbook work. It was much faster and more interesting to work with than pen and watercolour work, and when I began to play with assembling various elements I was delighted with the bold shapes and clarity. These collaged experiments are rough, but they show me what I need to do next - and I am loving the colours.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! This week I made a pattern from townhouses inspired by Edinburgh terraces. I enjoyed the drawing work, I found plenty of scope for imagination.
Architecture is finding its way back into my work since the house move from rural Perthshire back to Dunfermline town, Fife, where I was born and grew up. I now have familiar views from my work room over lovely houses and an abundance of trees and gardens. My Dad was an architect, and I used to work in his studio during school holidays; I still have many of his architectural plans and drawings. It is interesting that fewer midges, other insects, and plant life are appearing in my work now - it is great fun to introduce them to buildings in drawings (not literally!) Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Monday: I finished the linear flower drawing I was working on during the previous week.
Tuesday: a mock-up for some colour ideas for a pattern. Wednesday: I began work on a coloured version of the linear flowers, painting with gouache. Thursday: I completed the gouache work when it filled the entire sheet of paper. Friday: i played around with different coloured stems and backfill fronds. Then, over the weekend I took scans of some the sprigs in the drawing and cleaned them up. They look pretty and full of character which I like, I am sure they will come in useful. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I made a return to working with my hands this week, as opposed to digitally!
Procreate on iPad was a miracle during the house move, requiring no space or materials other than a stylus and a charger which enabled me to continue to work and generate new ideas (when there was time). I created some digital work which I find truly wonderful - see last week's post. At the beginning of this week, however, I was struggling with it. In the end I became aware that I was trying to replicate my freehand drawing methods and it wasn't working for me. I tried every brush and everything the digital brushes could do, but I was going silently mad in the process. I know there are artists out there who effortlessly produce work in Procreate and create their own brushes to suit, and I can't tell the difference between their digital and hand-made works, but I was spending hours - days and hours - and getting frustrated and wasting time producing hellish, ugly, stiff, overwrought works. In the end I thought that was nuts. My studio is well enough organised now to be able to work by hand and get it into Photoshop. I set up my room so I have a drawing table and a Mac table with a large enough monitor to finish hand drawn and painted work for Redbubble, so here is what I came up with: a floral watercolour, beginning work on a very lovely pattern; a design made from home-made rubber stamps, and a cyan line drawing of a spaced-out cat in a garden - I don't know yet what will become. I will continue to work in Procreate, it is an amazingly powerful tool for iPad and I enjoy using it. I have created many works over the past year, discovering fascinating ideas which I wouldn't have happened without it (see previous posts!). But I have to say it was lovely to get out the pens, pencils and watercolours again, too. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep lots of scrapbooks and sketchbooks where I develop ideas and design little creatures. Here's a peek inside one ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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 ...
|