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 I do like a week that starts with a new moon on Monday. It feels like a fresh start, rich in potential for new beginnings and adventures. This Monday was ... interesting. It started with an unintentional mashup of the Happy Days lettering idea I was working on last week. I opened the PSD document with layers in Preview by mistake and saved as a Jpeg, resulting in mangled transparent areas. It has a great 1950s vibe! I then went on to flood the kitchen at lunch time (left a tap running, plug in sink, nipped out to the bins, got distracted, 30 mins later = major flood). At least we had all clean drawers and cupboards, not to mention a spotless floor by the time we mopped up - that's a good new beginning.
On Tuesday I made a sunny composition of poppies and butterflies, thinking it would look good on tote bags. It didn't, but I discovered how to enable Kids' Clothing on Redbubble, which is great because I think a lot of my designs suit children's clothing better than adult. During the remainder of the week I made a new colour palette and reworked the Happy Days lettering. I wanted something cleaner and brighter to really look happy, and here is the result! Hopefully things will settle down now we have passed the new moon, and tomorrow brings the first quarter. No more floods and mashups. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! It’s the full moon, and this morning’s is a ‘super blood wolf moon’! A total lunar eclipse gives a reddish tint to the full moon, and during this time the moon will be slightly closer to the Earth than usual. Plus, the January full moon is known as the wolf moon or great spirit moon - giving us this wonderfully Harry Potter-sounding ‘super blood wolf moon’. We have begun to have small flurries of snow and frosty nights here in Scotland, so I drew this scene with ice crystals and snowflakes tinged pink by the blood moon falling around two silently-staring wolves. Thanks for visiting, 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.
Click the image if you would like to find out more and visit my other website. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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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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