I got a nice surprise during the week when I stumbled across a forgotten stars chequerboard pattern I had made especially for my Glorious Marrow ditty. I had forgotten it was all in repeat and ready to go, and had some fun playing around with different colourways. I was especially delighted when I discovered something else to do with the stars - making them twinkly. My love for textiles makes me think they would make a beautiful embroidery, the radiating lines suggest stitches. Wouldn't the sparkle stand out if it was sewn in gold thread? Just imagine, little stars sparkling with radiating gold catching the light.
Different patterns in matching colours: here is a mix of vintage daisy, the pattern I'm just calling 'shapes' until I think of a better name, and a combs pattern I've been working on this week - plus a very cute moth on a flower.
Lots of fun with retro colours this week!
Starting from top left and going round in a clockwise spiral to the centre: 1. The first version of last week's pattern tile. I decided it was too fussy for what I wanted, so a simplified version replaced it. 2. Colourful lines created using a clipping mask, and 3. The delightful chaos of the layer unclipped! It looks like mad kiddy drawing. 4. A classic 70's green scheme. 5. A couple of motifs I introduced to the pattern but didn't use - will keep for a completely different pattern, I think 6. I spent a lot of time during the week collecting colours based on retro children's toys, as well as traditional sweets like midget gems and jelly babies. Disturbingly, I discovered the plastic toy colours were virtually the same as the food colours. 7. My favourite renditions in a natural palette, and 8. Another favourite colour scheme, from a vintage floral based on a men's neck tie in my collection. 9. A 'missed register' to make your eyes shudder! Made by nudging the outline away from the fill. I like it. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A return to geometrics, designing a pattern with some simple shapes I made back in January (the first artwork of the year). I quickly threw together a few ideas at the time which I have been waiting to explore, and this week seemed to be a good time to start.
The new version shown here is tighter than January's: I weeded out some elements, introduced a couple of new ones, and rearranged the composition to suit. I tested the pattern with a single tone to see how it holds together - some colour experiments will be coming soon. My full time job is busy at the moment, and lots of my spare time is being spent outside gardening with B in the fair weather, so I'm just taking it easy inching along with the artwork for now. The pattern outline tile for June Meadow 2023 version is now refined and finished. I simplified a few areas and tidied up loose ends (literally). It now works perfectly with colour drop, so creating different colourways is a seamless process. Even if I change my mind a dozen times about a certain area, I can now simply copy and paste in a new outline section where I want the changes, remove the old section, and fill with new colour without chewing up the edges. So I now have two versions of this pattern, one for day and one for night.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! The outline tile for this floral pattern is now finished, so I began working on colour experiments. These progress shots with lots of surrounding space are very pleasing to the eye. As well as trying out different colour fills, I experimented with using coloured outlines, giving a different cast to the hues of the pattern. I also made the outline disappear altogether by colouring it the same as the background, as can be seen in the image above. As always at this stage lots of new ideas popped up along the way, alongside quite a bit of troubleshooting - I found missing parts of line, things overlapping where they shouldn't and a few other of the usual suspects to amend. For example, as I started colouring in the outline drawing above, I noticed the leaf to the right of the coloured section was overlapping the large poppy just visible on the right edge, which made no spacial sense; the big poppy shouldn't be behind the plant next to it, which is already behind the coloured group. It halted the graceful upwards direction of the pattern, so I amended the drawing by neatly tucking the leaf in. The change can be seen to the left of the big orange poppy - now it's in a happy space and flowing nicely. I loved this quiet William Morris-type colour scheme against the dark green background. I saved this progress shot while playing around and will keep the idea for later. It probably doesn't look like it here, but these versions are very rough and ready and are definitely just sketches. I changed my mind about the colours so many times I exhausted the outlines with too many colour drops, and there are accidental ticks and smudges all over from too much handling, but after a few more colour tweaks I will have the references to make some lovely clean patterns.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I began work tracing this favourite pattern sketch in March. I put it to one side for a while and picked it up again this week, got a bit obsessed with it, and have probably spent way too much time on it by now! It looks really pretty as a sketch, but presented a few unexpected problems when I put my new outline drawing into repeat. First, there was a pronounced vertical caused by the pink ragged-robin flower directly underneath the main poppies element running into each other; also, the leaf and bud section belonging to it was clumsy. The pattern was overcrowded and needed more flow and space, so the ragged-robin, much as I loved it, was the first to go. Now there was that awkward extra space to be filled with another element. I came up with these two ideas: More challenges presented themselves on the way, the kind I enjoy digging away at to get a pattern to work. These are the four last stages before reaching the final design:
1. The dock plant element, as well as not being as simple as I wanted for the fill, presented another unwanted vertical; also marked here for amendment are daisy elements whose style didn't match the overall look, and some line clustering like ink blots to be cleaned up. 2. Switched to the simpler poppy element, but eek! Now I have an unwanted strong diagonal from one of the other elements. 3. I flipped and refitted the offending element to disrupt the diagonal and improve the overall flow; I wanted to suggest a relaxed meadow ruffled by gentle breezes rather than a countryside march! In addition I found three more 'ink-fill' areas to simplify. 4. The final stage, indicating areas for further decluttering to clarify the line. So, there we have it; the outline pattern now fits well and is flowing nicely. The next step is to try colouring it, and see how it looks after that. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Because I don't have any automated tools to produce the geometry for a true ogee repeat, I had to devise all sorts of tricks to make templates and guides for these patterns. I managed to get the spacing perfectly even between the long ogees above by making a 'pixel counter': Procreate's crayon brush has a good texture, so a boldly-coloured block of that exposes the pixels clearly when zoomed up close. I moved the block around the initial pattern tile to measure the distance between components. I also made good use of Procreate's built in accurate click-to facility, and the canvas crop function. The image below shows the assisted quadrant rotational drawing function at work over a home-made guide which looks like a windmill. In addition, the ellipse tool is a bit too random to create perfect circles to use as guides for drawing S shapes, but I got around that by using the vignette frame tool in AfterLight on a plain square canvas. I did 'cut out' the circle very carefully so I could manipulate it, but just the plain flat image AfterLight provided is a good guide tool. Below is the result: an elegant, flowing line which creates a true ogee pattern, very pleasing to the eye. I actually love this kind of problem-solving and inventing new methods, all based on how these patterns would be made by hand using curved templates, compasses, rulers and tracing paper. I have shared more images of these 'tools' here on my Heather Eliza journal.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Inspiration comes from unexpected places: the lovely curves pictured above are pieces of vinyl fabric left over after cutting out panels to recover a set of chairs at work. They were tossed to one side to be discarded, but not before I spotted the potential for an ogee style pattern! I quickly laid them out and snapped a quick pic for reference before they were swept away. A few days later I started playing about with a few ideas for making patterns. I cut one curved motif in Procreate based on the vinyl scraps; above is an initial blocking together to see how it flows. I began assembling elements for a repeat tile, and as always I was fascinated by the forms produced at each step of the process. They make a srtiking collage when collected together. There are a few different ideas here for a variety of elongated ogee-style patterns. I also began working on a true ogee pattern of flowing identical elements, as yet unfinished.
This all started me wondering where the word ogee comes from; an exquisite old Persian term, perhaps? Or is it a spelling of the initials 'OG', standing for something? Maybe a French Moroccan word? and so my musings went on. After a little research I found this completely unexpected answer, which could even be Scottish, and local to me! "While the origins of the word ogee are uncertain, it was first used in the whisky distilling industry. It refers to a bulbous chamber which makes up part of a traditional pot still. The ogee sits on top of the distilling pot and, as the liquid heats up, it creates a larger surface area for the vapours to land on." - www.handmadekitchens.co.uk Well I never! Maybe 'OG' really does stands for something like 'Old Gertie' and just became a word after all. I know the vats are often given affectionate names in the distilleries ... Thanks for visiting, see you next week! In an audacious piece of art theft, I took these roundels from one of my Heather Eliza drawings made on my iPad, and made a pattern from them. Well, I am the same person, after all. For now I have been enjoying the sketchy look of them which would look good printed on smooth paper, but I may at some point make clean, bright versions for textiles in different colourways. The two versions above are exactly as the original, whereas these pictured below have had layers removed and colours and direction changed. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
A few adjustments to colour and tones, and I also found a faulty leaf! It was such a tiny fault on a crossover section of the pattern it may not even have shown up, but I don't leave things which could come back and haunt me later so I fixed it. It took ages to not only to correct a few pixels' worth and put the section into repeat with the rest of the pattern, but to amend all versions of the work I had made so far, going right back to the first outline drawing. I wanted the crows to feature some blue, but I felt the black lines looked too heavy. I tried recolouring the lines but nothing worked well until I went for the partial recolour option above. This is what the layer beneath the main pattern, used for touch-ups and fills for areas too small for colour-drop, looks like - I like its sketchy, painterly look. There's something quite vintage (perhaps 1930s - 40s) which I can image printed on a flowing, soft crepe material.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! The freedom I have to produce different colourways in my crows and berries pattern: above, hot pinks, and below is a work in progress in blues. The blue version above is still in quick block-filled form with a few colour decisions to be made. It is quite a slow process and you may spot some missing white spots around the edges where I need to touch in and refine on a layer underneath the pattern. Also, the black lines on the crows are looking a bit heavy for some reason, something I need to address - but it's getting there.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Today is a double post with my Heather Eliza journal, not something I do very often. However, these chairs started 10 years ago (almost to the day) as drawings in a Heather Eliza sketchbook which I traced this week and featured in my Heather Eliza journal, where I have written a little about how they were originally made. During the week I suddenly had the idea to get a T-shirt made for work with upholstery in-jokes on badly drawn chairs (because I am an upholsterer and seamstress by day) - I thought the lads at work might find it amusing. I remembered the old wonky chair sketches which I thought would be great for the job, and got them out to give them the Binky treatment. Here is a quick attempt at a T-shirt design. I'm a big fan of raglan sleeve baseball T's, so this style is what I would get for myself if I did decide to get one. Here is a suitably upholstery-type cheeky-looking young man modelling my design on my Redbubble: Below is a continuation of the crows pattern I have been revamping, beginning to add colour. It's actually quite slow work, a lot of touching-in has to happen as I go along, but that is over-ruled by the freedom I now have with this pattern to create different colourways. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
At the moment I am still patiently working my way through recreating some of my favourite patterns I made over the last two years in a clear, clean style. I am now able to drop colours to fill the strong outlines, which I can either leave black for a comic book look or 'lose' by making them the same colour as the fill. This process gives me an enormous amount of freedom to use different colourways now, previously I could only change the background colour; and they should print a lot better on fabric than previous versions. The very first version used folksy birds which I still find absolutely charming, but I know from experience its subtlety would be lost on fabric (it may work as a wallpaper printed at high resolution). I dropped the folksy birds in favour of crows, just because I love corvids, but I may make a new version using the folksy birds as well. Here is the new version at the very beginning, tracing my line over a greyscale version of the pattern without any birds at this stage - still a long way to go!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A clean and clear new version of an old favourite. I traced outlines from the first pattern which was composed using collaged textures, then used colour fills in fresh palettes. This half-drop pattern is now vibrant and ready to go against a natural background. This pattern has now gone through several transformations. See the very first idea here and the first pattern version here. While the painter in me loves the soft textures and nuanced colours of the earlier versions, I realise that when printed on fabric the textile itself provides texture, and it needs room to breathe. It doesn't require any more than clean lines and flat colour; if you try to add more, the final result gets muddy and discoloured.
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.
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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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