I started making birthday cards back in early July, but only got one done - so now all the December and January birthdays are coming up fast, I had to get on with serious card-making. Luckily I had cut and folded all the card backings, so just the images to make up and mount to do now. I started out without the faintest idea of what I was going to do, but after a few experiments and fails this is how they started: a sheet of sprigs. Some wax resist drawn onto them with a candle stump, watercolour and a selection of rubber stamps later and hey presto - enough cards to last until next summer. Of course, there are families and couples and I don't want to send the same card out to these folks, so there are companion cards in a different style which I made up at the same time - see those on my Heather Eliza blog.
A Voynich inspired sketchbook page, above; I used a small pointed brush to suggest embroidery threads. By the way, I love the colourful rafia table mats which I have beside me all day, they have daisy shapes and are so cheery. Below is day one of a watercolour sketch with interesting inky marks which I think look like silk, flowing over the slightly buckled paper. It will be worked on further, using the Procreate sketches from last week as a reference, as this one pictured below - delicate, frondy and wispy and full of movement. We'll see where the watercolours take me, I really haven't a clue at the moment! Also, I'm so focussed on the children's book at the moment that I'm not doing very much else, so it may be a little while until I get back to the watercolours.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A run of beautiful warm sunshine this week proved a big distraction - I didn't want to be indoors at all. We had a couple of barbecues, one evening we ate our evening meal as a picnic on the grass. The next evening we lit the barbecue again, but while we were cooking our marinated spatchcock chicken which I had prepared earlier in the day, the cold came back in and we retreated indoors to eat.
I did get my sketchbook and paints outdoors, though, and the pop-up tent went up as my 'outdoor studio' - which I am pleased to report I am getting quite proficient at folding up and putting away now. Last year there were a couple of hysterically hilarious antics, not aided by wine and B cracking jokes at my attempts. I bought the tent in 2016 and have used it every summer since, so 5 years practice is finally paying off! I had the best fun making this pop-up birthday card for Beardo Benjo (emminent YouTuber)!
Last week I just happened to stumble across a Zoom make-along with two wonderful women I follow on Instagram. I had no idea how a pop-up card worked and became very interested, just in time to make this monster card for Ben. It was gloriously messy, sticky, painty and I loved it. My thanks to the generosity of: @deborah.j.stein @sara.hand_art.and.wonder @storycampdisco This week, some of my monsters developed two heads! - inspired by insects which often display a big scary face on their body or wings which isn't actually their face. At long last I worked out how to make Reels on Instagram with the image top left, above, and set it to "What's that coming over the hill" by The Automatic - great fun.
Still working in my sketchbook, I developed the floral theme a little further with my adoration of ikebana. I love the gravity-defying weirdness where truth is indeed stranger than fiction as they spring from preposterously tiny vases or shallow bowls apparently supported by nothing but moss. I am also preparing some textured Fabriano Rosaspina, a heavy card-like printing paper, for stand-alone works. I'm getting texture by adding whiting to my primer and using lots of scumbling. Yesterday I had some weekend fun making small yellow flowers from one of the paintings into a repeat pattern, which I am calling Pansy Riot. Can't wait to see it on some products. 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. 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. One of the perks of working over so many years is an extensive back catalogue to dip into as required. It was a big help over Folktale Week this year as I was so busy in the weeks before it started I ended up with only Sunday 3rd November to work for the prompts, with yet another busy week ahead for Folktale Week itself. Keeping the prompts in mind, I trawled through my archives and came upon illustrations from 5 years ago which resonated with the folktale vibe so much they could have been made specifically for the purpose. I hadn’t ever used them for anything else; the drawing above of a secret door for snails was perfect for Day 2, Secret, especially after bringing it into Procreate for some up-to-date tweaks. I made this one for Day 3, Path, in a similar way and altogether got the first five days done, catching up the following weekend making ‘Key’ for day 6, and ‘Crown’ for the final day on Sunday. I made it by the skin of my teeth, and thoroughly enjoyed the process.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Folktale Week 2019 is upon us! It hasn’t actually started yet, but the build-up is a busy and exciting time. It begins tomorrow when the organisers announce the prompts which are shared instantly by everyone, and all participants work in secret on their pieces. Then, on November 4th, Instagram will transform into a week long explosion of colourful folktales when everyone starts posting their work. It’s global and spans all time zones, so each day is a 24-hour celebration as artists from all over the world make their posts. The variety of work is breath-taking: last year saw illustration, photography, papercraft, cosplay, modelling, embroidery, felting to name but a few!
Folktale Week will be running on Instagram November 4 - 10. Fancy joining in? Search #folktaleweekand #folktaleweek2019 to find the talented developers who initiated it last year, and look out for the prompts tomorrow! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Since we passed the autumn equinox, my 100 days of cats project has taken on a positively festive feel! It wasn’t a conscious decision, just that a cold snap turned my thoughts to winter woollies and hats and scarves and then on to parties and pantomime. Above are the resulting adventures of Dick Whittington’s cat (46), a surprise party (48), butter wouldn’t melt (45) and (47) naughty Pussycat from the nursery rhyme:
Pussycat, pussycat where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the queen. Pussycat, pussycat what did you there? I frightened a small mouse under her chair. An unexpected and interesting thing has come out of the 100 days project on Instagram: new followers are seeing the account as being about the antics of a cat named Binky McKee, as opposed to illustrations of cats by an artist named Binky McKee. I’m fine with that! I was determined to keep an open mind when I began the project, and I am happy to go along with it. I like the idea of creating a character who can tell stories on my behalf which I can post while working on other projects which can’t be shared until complete. I will most likely do Folktale Week with Binky. I had intended the 100 days project to be finished in early November, then move straight into Folktale Week, but events since the beginning of September forced a go-slow which means I will definitely still be on it during Folktale Week. Folktale Week will be running on Instagram November 4 - 10. Fancy joining in? Search #folktaleweek to find the talented developers who initiated it last year, and look out for the prompts! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Booklet No.3 is underway in the 100 Days Project! The cover shows cat no. 41. I am nearly half way through my 100 cats now. I am delighted with how much I have learnt already, and how I have managed to come a long way towards developing my cat drawings. This is was exactly what I had hoped to achieve, but didn't know what to expect. Jerry Saltz, in his wonderful article How To Be An Artist, extols the virtue of doing something a minimum of 100 times. Step Two, Experience: "10. Find your own voice, then exaggerate it. If someone says your work looks like someone else's and you should stop doing it, I say don't stop doing it. Do it Again. Do it 100 times or 1,000 times ... if it still looks like the other person's, try a different path." And again: "13. Scavenge. Life is your syllabus: gather from everywhere ... you can do this by looking for overlooked periods of art history, disliked and discredited styles, and forgotten ideas, images and objects. Then work them into your own art 100 or 1,000 times." It's true, doing something 100 times really does have an amazing effect. There are 33 rules and a number of exercises in this article. I copied them all into a notebook and I find useful wisdom in every single one of them. <<<Newsflash!>>> Apparently, Jerry Saltz's article is going to become a book! I just found this on Vulture, the culture and entertainment site from New York magazine. Apparently there are now 70 rules! Now, there is a date for the calendar! It's very exciting.
Speaking of dates, there will be no Weekly next Sunday as I will be out for the whole weekend, so - Thanks for visiting, see you in a fortnight! - when I will probably have a few more cats to show you. And just a quick PS: I used to do other pupils' punishment exercises of 100 lines for them at school. I loved writing the same sentence over and over again, trying to imitate their handwriting. It paid well and worked wonders for my forgery techniques! Cats, cats and more cats! I am over a quarter of the way through my 100 Days Project. These scans of booklet No.2 show the (very) hand-made nature of the paper, my stitching, and the way I am working. I discovered this week that if I am using watercolours on this paper, which is very absorbent, I need to double up the pages to prevent bleeding through to drawings on the flip sides. I glued extra pages into the booklet to compensate, and now I am enjoying using watercolour freely. Some very sneaky cats and a cat burglar came out of this week! So far the pages in this booklet have been in order, but they are now out of sequence. I number each drawing as it is finished (rather than by page number) and sometimes I get stuck and move on to a new drawing while I am thinking about how to resolve a problem with an earlier one; these drawings do not appear consecutively in the booklet, but go 24, 25, 29, 30, 26, 27 because drawing no.29 (which was going to be no.26) gave me a few problems which took a couple of days to work out, and in the mean time I finished the other two. 29 was worth the extra time and thought, and it turned out to be a big favourite! I am loving that followers on Instagram are suggesting cats they would like to see, also my beloved B is now constantly thinking up new ideas! It's all much appreciated and very exciting.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! The chestnut trees outside my window are fruiting! Summer is progressing, and it won’t be long until it is conker season once more. The blossoms have given way to tiny, pale green fruits which I can see growing bigger by the day. Curious to get a closer look, I spent some time squinting up at the trees (I used to climb them as a youngster!) I found some young, underdeveloped nuts fallen in the grass which look a bit like plums, sporting tiny bumps on their skin where spikes would grow. I know it’s a well-trodden path, but I’m in awe that these tiny, encapsulated nuggets put down roots and simultaneously shoot sprouts into the air which grow into enormous beings with a lifespan far longer than we humans.
Coincidentally, I am working at the opposite end of the chestnut cycle in my drawings over at The Weekly on my HEW website, drawing chestnuts which had begun to root and sprout, but perished and shrivelled up. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! 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 began working on lettering for two book illustrations of posters at the beginning of the week. My time was restricted to the evenings this week, because all efforts went into Cupar Arts Eden (I have written more about that on The Weekly at my Heather Eliza website), so I drew on my iPad. I wanted some embellishments for the lettering; once I was happy with the design I had a bit of fun and allowed it to grow beyond the letters all over the image, in a wild garden or Wind in the Willows theme, and played with clouds and patterns, enjoying the invention. After a few days I had built a nice little collection of lettering and patterns and discovered a lot of new ideas.
I also cleaned up an image for a header on my recently resurrected Twitter account @binkysark - enjoying being there again! By the end of the week which had been entirely indoors and digital, it was refreshing to pull out 4 little floral watercolours I painted a while ago. I am interested to see how watercolours on paper interact with lettering, clouds and willowy patterns created on iPad and shall experiment. I promised myself some time in my pop-up tent in the garden painting more flowery paintings influenced by surrounding plant life. That's just fantasy right now, because the weather forecast predicts heavy thundery showers with much surface water and possible flooding later tonight and all day tomorrow. Not really tent weather. 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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