 We have so many friends whose birthdays fall between November and January that it has become an annual ritual to make birthday cards as soon as the Christmas cards are done, and it is free licence to mess about with every craft material in the studio (hem, spare room) plus anything I can purloin from B's shed. This year the hot glue gun came in extremely useful.
Looking at these birthday cards laid out together drying, I thought this would make a lovely pattern. It's been a while since I did some pattern-making, so that's something to look forward to for the new year, if not sooner. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  Clipping masks (not face-masks for a change) became an obsession last week when I realised how beautifully different papers and textures sit together in a patchwork resembling a quilt. The scope for experimentation on just one set of shapes is literally infinite, and collecting and collating scans for them is an exciting process.  This ‘Sunday’ illustration uses a bird I drew earlier in the year, together with a garland I painted last year. I deconstructed the bird into separate layers in Procreate, and spent some time working on the garland so I could play around with overlaying a variety of scans. Here, collaged together, are patterns from my sketchbooks, some of the gouache paintings from last week’s entry, a collection of painted textures also from my sketchbooks, pages from vintage books, and a map of Canada (random!)
Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  These two patterns were spin-offs from the second (blue) drawing in my last entry. Working in Procreate allows for a lot of freedom and experimentation with sets of shapes and colours, and it’s very satisfying to be able to produce new works relatively quickly. I say relatively quickly, but a lot of time this week went into designing the little birds - but I’m sure I will use them again in different works!   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!  This is one of my digital sketchbooks. I am full-on with the children's book illustrations at the moment so there isn't much time for anything else, but occasionally I like a little light relief. Throwing together a simple pattern is great fun, and sketchbooks like these make it easy. Each image is drawn in Procreate on its own layer, so I can easily copy, paste, and rearrange different elements to play with different patterns. The sludge-green background is so I can spot any unwanted marks and tidy edges nicely.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  Sometimes it's hard to keep going when the news around the world keeps on getting worse. I have to say my work was plain old ornery this week and I achieved very little. However, some good things did happen to bring cheer; B's son (my godson) came to stay for the weekend with his friend in their fancy drift cars, which turned some heads. The energy of the young people was positive and the company most welcome. My very good friend had her birthday, too, and I made her the cute card above right which I liked.
I have wanted to draw the little plant mister above left for the longest time, so in the face of nothing else working I decided to give myself a treat and do it. I enjoyed it very much, I love its form and delicate little details and I decided not to clean it up too much, but to leave shivery lines here and there which seemed appropriate and expressive. Sometimes I feel when work feels stale and forced it's a good thing to have a break and do something just for oneself; it often injects something into the stuff that isn't working, bringing it back to life. I have a wonderfully wonky old candle stick which I might draw next.  Christmas cards all finished, posted and delivered! The design is a rubbing of the lid of an old Indian box, made by passing an inked roller over Japanese tissue laid on top of the box. Once the ink was dry a shmoosh of glitter glue (obligatory) added a sparkly sheen, which looks speckled in this scanned image.  Somewhat bizzarely, I also got into Peppa Pig this week ... I often listen to YouTube videos while I work, and one day I suddenly noticed an autoplay anomaly had taken me into the middle of Peppa Pig - Official Channel - I had never seen a Peppa Pig episode before, and I really liked it! I have seen them all now, several times, loving the drawings, fully developed characters, stunning compositional sense and clear, soft colours. The sound track is as good as the animations, rich with fun little touches of giggles, gasps, and 'uh-oh' sounds which carry the stories along smoothly. I find the whole series beautifully put together, and think I can learn a lot from it.  The schoolroom clips are some of my favourites, I love the differences in scale between the characters. I realise I have come rather late to the Peppa party and nobody is going to be surprised by this, but it has made a very happy and relaxed atmosphere in my work space! It's quite inspiring. Thanks for visiting, see you next week - and in the mean time of course, have a very ...   At last, Christmas card-making underway! I'm running a bit behind time this year and cutting it fine for International post, but catching up. I should really begin collecting ideas and materials in September to begin the process of Christmas card-making in October, because November and early December get busy with Heather Eliza work for winter exhibitions; I just didn't get around to Christmas things before Hallowe'en, after which time runs away. Complicated by a head-cold virus which wiped my brain's creative files, I had a couple of false starts, but luckily one feverish night I remembered a carved Indian box I have been itching to make prints from for ages. It bears a central motif which could be interpreted as the Christmas star, so in no time I was back to my excited self, up and running with the printing ink and roller and delighted with the results of a day's work.  A shmoosh of glitter later, plus mounting on excellent cream card blanks (purchased from Anita's on Amazon), and ... this year's cards are a Thing!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  Before getting into the annual card-making session, I took a couple of days for a brief brainstorming session with pattern. I had bought a new duvet cover from George at Asda during the week and got interested in the old-worldly chintz pattern, so I traced it to see how it worked. Since August, when jungly tendrils first showed up in my 100 days of cats project, I have wanted to experiment with using them in patterns, so inspired by tracing the duvet cover pattern I had a very quick cutting out session and began to play with symmetry and half drops. These quick sketches don’t stand up to close inspection due to speed of work, I would need to design them specifically to flow as a pattern, but I find the movement and delicacy interesting.
Now I’m going to have to have another brain-storming session with card images, because I haven’t the slightest idea what to do for my Christmas cards this year! Thanks for visiting, see you next week  My illustration for day 4 of Instagram's Folktale Week: the prompt was Smoke and I chose to use a drawing I made a little while ago collaged with outlines of trees on different layers of semi-opaque paper. It provided a good smoky backdrop to work on. I brought it into Procreate and added the smoke-dragon monster which made me think of the song Puff The Magic Dragon (1963) by Peter, Paul and Mary. I loved that song so much when I was little, and my Dad used to sing it to me all the time, but only the chorus and a few lines. He never got to the last verses, and I realise now it is really a sad song and I feel so sorry for Puff. It is still one of my favourite songs ever, and I found myself singing as I worked:
"Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee ..." Don't assume the song is about puffing drugs, as many did at the time (well, t'was the '60s). The band insist it contains no reference to drugs, being about loss of childhood innocence. The song was based on a poem written by Leonard Lipton in 1959 (the year I was born). I love the images the song conjures all the way through. There is a charming video with lyrics on You Tube, although be advised the sealing wax clip is a bit of a jump-scare - a bit visceral at first glance! I'll write a little bit about the last two days of Folktale Week in my next Weekly, then after that it's going to be Christmas card making and picking up where I left off on the 100 days project - another 47 cats to go, I think. I should have it done some time in 2020! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! PS Most of my links are to Wikipedia pages. I love Wikipedia, and donate to keep it free from commerce and advertising whenever I can. They are fundraising at the moment and you can donate here from as little as £2. "Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others." - founder Jimmy Wales says it all. If you can, please do help with whatever you can give.  A poster I made last year in the run-up to Folktale Week
I didn’t manage to get any new illustration work done this week, my focus being on making more confused flags for Artobotic vending machines, especially the Brexit Art machine. Because it is time sensitive with only 11 days left to go (apparently Britain will still leave the EU on the 31st of this month), I had to set the 100 days of cats project temporarily aside in order to prioritise Brexit themed art. When I get back to it, I will be incorporating 100 days of cats with Folktale Week, telling my stories for the prompts with cats! Folktale Week starts two weeks tomorrow, so I thought it would be interesting to look back on what I was doing this time last year. I want to make another “Folktale Week is Nigh” poster next week, so I pulled last year’s from my archives. It reminds me that a year ago I was working exclusively in Procreate on iPad because our house move was in full swing, and my new work space wasn’t yet functional. I could work anywhere at any time on iPad, even when travelling or in the dark. I enjoy mixing things up, who doesn’t love the play and experiment of collage? The main difference between now and then is that since March I have been drawing and painting by hand again. When I was working on patterns in the spring, I found Procreate to be great for cleaning up and ‘cutting out’ hand made elements. It feels natural to use a stylus for drawing around edges with the eraser tool, freeing hand painted images from their paper background to set them into transparent layers. Last week I combined hand painted cats and trees with scanned collage elements and digitally created images. I made the alphabet I use for text in Procreate, too, basing it on Goudy Old Style (my favourite font when I worked as a graphic designer). It’s such a glorious mixup, exciting and playful with endless possibilities - I predict I’ll be making more illustration work with these techniques in future! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! P.S: Confused Flags development can be seen in The Weekly at my HEW website  Beautiful hot weather got me outside again this week. I capitalised on the fast drying properties of hot sunshine and a light breeze to work quickly to produce a set of textured and patterned papers, using watercolour and rubber stamps. The intent was to use them to create birds, fish, flowers and insects, although I think they would also look lovely as gift-wrap or textiles - I will have great fun playing with them and trying different things out. I have loved to make simple stamps from erasers since school days, when during Latin I used to draw on my rubbers with biro and discovered I could print with them. I decorated all my jotters which gave me no end of delight - ending in lots of pretty jotters, but not a great deal of Latin expertise. I still love to cut erasers into basic shapes for stamping, and I have also had a number of stamps made commercially from my own artworks. The tendril-like spiral stamps in some of the textures above are over 25 years old and still going strong, although not as fine as they used to be. The mandala style stamp I had made up 6 years ago to make Christmas cards, the teardrop Paisley style stamps I bought in a job-lot from a wonderful craft shop we had for a while in Dunfermline, and the brown flower is a stamp I designed for a logo in 1996 to print brown paper bags for my business. All the rest are good old erasers, some of which also date back to the late ‘90s. Some I glued onto wooden blocks which have taken on a lovely inky patina over the years; ooh, I do love a good rubber stamp! Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  I set to work on the garlands paintings at the beginning of the week, starting with designing compositions with gouache paintings of poppies and butterflies I made a couple of weeks ago. It was lovely work, and I was delighted with the resulting pattern pictured above; I was particularly interested in the woodblock effect of the garlands. Next, I spent a couple of days designing lettering, with the aim of making cards and stickers - it was enormous fun playing around with various layouts, and I really got into it! I am looking forward to getting them into my shop next week.   I had a brainstorming session this week. What I do when I brainstorm is to work very fast, allowing myself 4-10 minutes per drawing, and do as many as I can until my brain runs dry. I don’t worry about good drawing, expertise, or mistakes. In fact, the time limit prevents overthinking, so mistakes are good; I believe problem-solving is one of the key processes which help an artist to find their own voice, and working fast forces you to think on your feet and get resourceful in a way only you know.
Once I have finished the drawing session I take the more interesting ones into photoshop - not necessarily the best, but often the craziest which appeal to me - and I treat them in the same way as I would treat a considered project. It is amazing what reveals and connections occur. The collage above is a mix of revisiting works I have made as early as 15 years old, bonkers stuff that came out of photoshop, one which is rough as anything but I worked on some more (the yellow cat), more bonkers photoshop, prints I made 10 years ago (bottom left) which have good pattern-making potential to take forward, and lastly the line drawing in sepia and brown, where this week’s happy process led me today. I recommend this exercise to anyone who suffers from creative block. I only get creative block in times of great sadness or similar emotional times, but I do get incredibly frustrated with myself. I have too many ideas and try and go deep into them all. This is a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff, to get back to your core, to see what is time-wasting and get back into your quiet self. I always feel cleansed, relaxed and stimulated after one of these sessions, ready to take on new work. Thanks for visiting, see you next week!  This week I worked on the tightest drawing I have made to date, inspired by illustrations in a 1930s gardening encyclopaedia I found (probably my grandmother's). I worked in Procreate with gel-pen streamlined to the max to produce the repeat pattern of andromeda, which looks great as a scarf, and on throw pillows and just about everything on Redbubble's products.
To loosen up a bit after all that tension, I played around with a folksy ear-of-wheat based pattern, which in an altered state formed the posh rug these kitties are playing on for this weekend's Caturday hashtag on Instagram! It was so nice to get out a painterly brush and play with cats and colours. It's a bit of a rough idea so far, but I will tidy it up and make it into something, because it worked really well. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! |
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Welcome to my illustration blog, where I share what I have been up to during the week.
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 - about 40 of them during her 94 years of life. Currently I am working on illustrating a children's book, pattern making, and of course I can't resist a good Instagram challenge such as Folktale Week or Inktober. 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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January 2021
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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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