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! This is a collage of all the flowers and fern drawings I have been making during the week. I am fascinated by pattern-making but haven't really done it since learning how to make a repeat at school, which I loved - but recently I got out the William Morris book for inspiration, and started to think about designing patterns for my Redbubble store items. I need to brush up on my technique and get some practice in by hand, but so far I have learnt how to use the tools in Photoshop to make a simple tiled pattern which I am excited about! There is still a long way to go before I can even get close to the skill and intelligence of a William Morris, but it's a real project and I am enjoying the work. I am going to do Jake Parker's "make 100 somethings" - by pattern no. 100 I should be on my way!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! I have a very special scrap of fabric which I keep in my work room, hanging on the wall in a frame. It dates from about 1973 or 1974, and it is special because it represents a magical Christmas. My parents didn't have a lot of spare money back in the 70s, so for my 14th or 15th Christmas Dad had built, in secret, the most beautiful rocking chair which he painted white. My Mum made a cushion for its seat, and covered it in that fabric. They also gave me a book of Arthur Rackham illustrations, and the album Now We Are Six by Steeleye Span. I was absolutely blown away! I love the fabric so much that over the years I have made countless drawings of it. It gives me a very special feeling, which a friend once told me is called 'congruence'. About 2 weeks ago I started a new drawing of it in earnest, using Procreate so I could use the layers as colour separations. I am totally fascinated with the way colour can completely change the feeling of a textile, and could literally play around with different colourways for ever! The top left square here is the closest to the original colours. I had a wonderful time experimenting, I find it therapeutic at times when the dreaded block happens and helps to get me back on track with my work. The most difficult thing to do here was to limit my experiments to just 9 for this post! 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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May 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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