A limitation on my illustration work is that I can only work small on my old iPad Air. It's comfortable physically, but I can't made a double spread in one image, I have to work two separate pages. I have a maximum of 9 layers for the canvas size I use for each page in Procreate, but it gets tetchy and crashes a lot after about 6, so I have developed a method of saving the work, merging the layers, continuing with additional work on the image, merging again, and so on until the illustration is finished. I keep a work in progress folder on the MacBook where I store the documents with intact layers, and bounce back and forth by Airdrop between that and my iPad.
I faced similar issues when I was doing a lot of pattern-making, but developed methods to get around the limitations, which have come in unexpectedly handy now for working double-spread illustrations. This rolling sea image is a perfect example; above shows how it would look on a single page, below demonstrates how it flows across two pages when they are put together. Our beautiful Molly went home today, having ended her stay on a high note - a barbecue amongst the trees for our little community. As usual. B and I had our usual chicken tikka 'stand' in the row of barbecues (it does feel so much like doing a craft fair!) and Molly baked vegan millionaire's shortbread, lush with gooey caramel. High winds made it rather a lively do, with a big wind-break to stop the food on the communal table being tossed into the treetops.
Molly was actually working remotely from our home all week, so I was able to keep my head down and get on with the final stages of the children's book. It's a hair's breadth away from being completely finished. As always with these projects, content can't be shared which would be a spoiler, but I'm sure nobody will mind me showing the right hand side of a page background from the book today. I'm taking this week off blogging to spend time with family staying with us, I'll be back again next week!
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! |
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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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