On Wednesday I made these two collages with last week's kite pattern, mixing them with a new version of a geometric design from last June, and a daisy one which is in progress at the moment. I am always trying out different ways to present my patterns in a lively way, rather than just showing them as a flat section. I am pleased with the freshness and clarity of these two. Thursday afternoon brought the glad arrival of two old friends from college days for an overnight stay, and on Friday morning I had a most valuable discussion about the book project I have been working on with pointers on how to approach my next one. I am enormously grateful to have learnt so much from my friend, and for his kind interest in my work, leaving me full of ideas. Then more joy followed on Friday evening when Molly arrived to stay for a week with us. All our happiness, however, was in direct juxtaposition with the incoming horrific news of the invasion of Ukraine. Just as we were beginning to feel things were returning to some kind of post-pandemic normality, forces of evil invaded the lives of hundreds of thousands of East European and Russian citizens, robbing them of their peace, security, and normal lives. In the light of current affairs, my happy work looks out of context; there can be little happiness for all those people at the moment, and my heart genuinely goes out to all those people affected by this unprovoked and barbaric action: not only the direct victims of the assault, but also to the people of Russia who do not want this war and do not condone these actions. I am trying to think of something I can do to express my support for them, but it all seems so trivial in the light of their sorrow.
I made a peace poster for Ukraine which I posted here on my Heather Eliza blog. During the week I was filing, backing up and sorting my iCloud files and I found a forgotten but favourite design I made in March 2020 buried in the archives waiting to be put into repeat. I got onto it in spare moments, not only getting it into repeat but tweaking a few finishing touches. It was a lovely task and my favourite version of it is pictured above. Unfortunately, this version was an accident - I hit something by mistake in the editing suite while I was cropping it for Instagram, thought "oooh!", saved a jpeg, and now unfortunately I can't work out what I did. I thought it was something to do with the enhance wand but I can't get it to work again on any of the colourways, so, hmmm, some extra detective work required. A few of the colourways I tried out below: At the beginning of the week I made a textured background for the latest pattern which really activated all the colourways (image below), so simple but effective. I also began work on a page for all my patterns on Redbubble, I will keep adding to that until they are all there. All rainy-day jobs, I even put away the Christmas trees and hoovered, bringing the house out of lockdown mode ahead of a long-awaited family visit. That was hard work, I can tell you. Then the sun came out with such brilliance at the end of the week all my focus was transferred to outdoors (see my HEW blog if you're interested). Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
Oh, the joy! Real paper, real paints, real everything again. Overnight this week it suddenly became spring, and there was warmth in the sun meaning I could get back into my work room. It's freezing in there and dark over the winter, but this week I opened it all up again and the absolute joy of natural work spilled out all over! So exciting - I have wanted to paint monsters for ages, so I started work immediately with a wild prolific madness. I am so genuinely happy! Don't get me wrong, I thank the Lord (and B!) for my iPad Air which has enabled me to keep producing through the most difficult of times, not just cold weather but during my parents' decline in health, the subsequent house move, and selling our former house during the horribly difficult times of the Covid plague. Periods when I didn't have a room at all, just shuttling back and forth in a car or a removal van and providing for wonderfully supportive friends who pitched in to help. Recently I have derived immense satisfaction from finding a way to make perfect patterns with basic technology digitally 'by hand' that's not actually carving woodblocks, and I've come a long way without Adobe products or automated patternmakers.
Being a trained painter, though, nothing beats the mess and randomness of the studio and I am so, so happy to be back. The freedom! I should also mention B and I had our first dose of Oxford AstraZeneca exactly one week ago today. It was an extremely well-organised event, really quite an exciting and pleasant experience with wonderful and competent NHS staff and heating in every booth. No side effects or symptoms to report, we should have some level of protection by next week. Is there a touch of spring in the air? Wishful thinking perhaps, but sunrise is now 10 minutes earlier than before the solstice, and sunset a good half hour later. Burn’s night is a mere week away, a significant day-changer as the northern hemisphere gains 5 minutes more daylight, adding extra minutes at each end of every day towards the brightness of Valentine’s, Candlemas, and heading for the spring solstice. Even now the long shadows resemble sundials rather than dark hollows, snow and ice have melted away under the strengthening sun (for the time being, anyway) and the pace is beginning to quicken as little birds chirp, snowdrops bloom and daffodils in green hoods shoot from the earth. The prettiest crescent moon in the southwestern skies is a benign sickle of hope.
Yesterday on our daily walk in the park we saw all our fellow dog walkers at once, taking advantage of the goodness of the midday sun, tails wagging joyfully as they greeted one another enthusiastically with a sniff on the bum. That is the dogs, not the walkers, to be clear; we humans are carefully socially distanced as becomes the British at the best of times, never mind during a pandemic. It all inspired this illustration of a ridiculously jolly Sunday’s Child: “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny, and blithe, and good, and gay”. Stay gay, my friends! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! 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! At last, I am starting to edge my way back into work. It looks as though our Perthshire house sale is on again. At the weekend we had a great visit from friends we haven’t seen since before lockdown. The household suddenly settled into a more regular regime, and all of a sudden I found myself with some time to work in the afternoon yesterday and today. Sometimes it’s hard to drop back into the swing of work. Re-opening projects which have been lying for 5 or 6 weeks can be daunting - what was the train of thought? How did I do that? - it can be overwhelming. So, I always find the antidote in a good dose of pareidolia to loosen up! The other day it rained hard overnight, but in the morning the sun was up and so hot I knew it would be drying the pavements in the park leaving picturesque watermarks. On our daily walk with the dog I took snaps with my phone which are proving to be a mine of inspiration ... ... Here we have, top: weird sun-god creating constellations from the sea, and above, a hiker. Below are the original snaps I took in the park. I nearly forgot to mention, I got a new stylus this week: I bought an Adonit Dash3. I use an old iPad (2014, 2ndGen) as well as a Samsung Galaxy mini phone, and an iPhone. This stylus works brilliantly on all. Previously I had two Heiyo styli; the first one was about 18 months old when the on/off switch cover fell off, following the plug charger cap which fell off almost immediately after purchase. I replaced the stylus with a new one, and that suddenly stopped working after just two months; I literally put it down to go to fetch a cup of tea and when I came back it had just stopped working. Nothing had changed on iPad. I switched back to the old one, which for all its faults worked fine for a couple of months until it, too, suddenly stopped working in mid-project. Tech support was infuriating so after some research I got the Adonit Dash3 and it is excellent! Smooth, instantly works etc etc. Nice nib for drawing and writing. Should have done that when the first Heiyo failed. Note and NB!!: it doesn't work on iPadPro.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I have been so grateful for good weather recently - for getting washing done and out on the line! I have been doing daily washes of B’s work clothes and weekly washes of dust sheets (there are about 8 massive sheets plus old bedsheets) and towels while he has been redecorating the old house, in readiness to hand over to its new owners. The regular loads of towels and bedding also must not be neglected, and I also capitalise on good drying weather to launder all the dog’s bedding. Yes, she has a bed in every room and the task of stinky-fighting is never ending. On top of that, house guests who impatiently waited for lockdown restrictions to be lifted have come tumbling in through the door in a whirlwind of joyful reunion - more bedlinen, cooking, barbecues resulting in a delightfully busy time.
So, I haven’t yet managed to start back at work yet quite as full time as I had imagined. I have started gathering things together, but that’s as far as it has gone. The photo above is a detail of my shopping list on the fridge door the other day, showing creativity must out one way or another! Doodles everywhere. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! We have just had the busiest 3 weeks. As soon as lockdown restrictions were eased here in Scotland it was all hands on deck as we focused our full attention on our old house which has been on the market for nearly two years. We do have buyers, an enthusiastic young couple who are a perfect fit for the property and itching to move in, and it was actually all systems go on the sale back in February. Of course everything then suddenly came to a halt, and we couldn’t even get out to the house to do routine maintenance and cleaning etc until 3 weeks ago.
It’s an old house and had been sitting empty all through the winter followed by lockdown, but in all that time it had fared better than expected. Nonetheless, the usual list of tasks and jobs had stacked up along with the cobwebs, and naturally we wanted to make sure the house was as spick and span as possible before the buyers made their first visit since before lockdown. It was lovely to be back there, cleaning and repainting, warming the place through and generally bringing it back to life. It was a very rewarding time, but any thoughts I may have entertained about getting any artwork done during that time quickly vanished. Also, we had disconnected the phone and internet when we moved out, so no blogs or Instagram happened at all! To cap it all, once we finished work on the house we both came down with a nasty norovirus type tummy bug last week. However, everything is done and we are much better now. The world is beginning to open up a little into the ‘new normal’ and things are moving on - so I am hoping that this coming week I will be able to start getting back into my work. I always try to make both my blogs as different as possible to reflect the differing areas of my work, but naturally, as Binky McKee and Heather Eliza Walker are actually both me, this week’s entry will have to do for both! Although I did post a winter picture here and a summer one on Heather Eliza's blog, so they are a bit different. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! This trio of ladies singing and humming evolved from character studies for a leading lady in the children's book I am working on, and I am sure it came from the current lack of hairdressing facilities! I got into the details of the different hairstyles in a big way, as my own hair grows more out of shape and shaggy in not a good way every day. It was a bit of fun which provided something to post on Instagram.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Spring is here, making our daily lockdown walk in the park an absolute pleasure. The wind has been cold but it's warming up a little and the sight, of budding and blossoming and shooting and sprouting is wonderful.
Back home to work after this! I actually haven't got much to write about this week, I'm just keeping my head down and beavering away at illustrations as usual, I am really looking forward to being able to share them here. Thanks for visiting, stay well and safe, see you next week! The children's book illustrations are going well, I'm getting very excited for the time I can finally share them. I also try to add something new to my Redbubble store every day, even if it's just a post card; this week I made this mandala tattoo design and love how it looks on the products.
Thanks for visiting, stay safe, and see you next week I had imagined I would have lots of time on my hands and get lots of work done in these extraordinary times of lockdown against the spread of coronavirus. It is true that reduced traffic outside brings peace and tranquility, but ironically I have never been more social. People having unexpected time on their hands means much more Face Time calls and get togethers on Zoom, as we bring one another cheer and chat to those who are in isolation. B and I have been more regular than ever dog walking as our 'one-a-day outdoors exercise' walk. Shopping takes so much longer because of social distancing measures in the shops, followed by cleaning down all the purchases when they come into the house. I have actually been forced out to the shops more often than usual; normally we would get two home deliveries a week, but now so many people are working from home that high demand on delivery slots makes it difficult to get one.
I did, however, spend a few days this week on my Redbubble store, continuing to make greetings cards, post cards and pin buttons from my 100 cats project, plus refreshing old patterns and adding a couple of new ones to decorate the products. Thanks for visiting, keep well, and see you next week! 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 |
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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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