I am having a mini-sketchbook binge! Here are some I made previously. I love making pocket-sized booklets. At the moment I am making five consisting of 5 sheets, folded and simply stitched together in the centre with carpet thread (I’m not going to impress anybody with my bookbinding skills here) using Thai Mulberry paper. I have already started with some cat cutouts I made last week, enjoying pasting them onto pages and working them with watercolour and pen. It's a relaxed and free way to develop ideas, and I enjoy the mix of line and textures. This photo shows work in progress: this gives some idea of scale. It's Minnie, my neighbour's cat, rolling around in the garden - as she does!
I am beginning to turn over the idea of doing the 100 Days Project on Instagram with cat drawings. It's a great way to develop work, and I have been most inspired by other artists' 100 days - hence the 5 booklets consisting of 20 pages. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! PS: If you were here earlier in the week, you may have noticed I replaced an image of works in progress with a photo of all my lovely handmade sketchbooks. I have been wanting to show these sketchbooks for ages - and I don't want to give too much away before I start on the #100daysproject! Watch this space! Playing about with cut-out cats, paper and pressed flowers and leaves, I couldn't resist giving my cats silly names! It seems to add to their characters, and stories start to form around them. May I present today, from the top row reading left to right:
1. Daphne Dorkington 2. Patricia Spoon 3. Gloria Grumps-Bypass 4. Mimelsa Mimsyboot 5. Mademoiselle Fou Fou 6. Suzi Spoon (Patricia’s twin) I have more lined up to do, including two cat portraits - Minnie and Mimi (actual names, but I may give them a silly surname!) Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Mostly cats, plus a few fish populate my work at the moment. I am sure this is unconsciously autobiographical, as I am looking after a cat and a goldfish for neighbours. I love cats, but don’t have one myself now so it is a pleasure to be privy to Minnie’s hauteur. She likes to make it clear she is way above associating with me, but every so often suppressed silliness breaks through, and she prances about chasing a glittery Santa head on string.
The goldfish is interesting, too. I don’t think he has a name, but I call him Michael Fish (after the weather man on TV). I don’t know how it happened, but the fish lost his tail one day - and it grew back! This, apparently, is a thing fish are capable of. Michael wears his new one like a chiffon train, swishing its delicate, sheer fabric behind him as he swims about his tank, which contains a satisfying mixture of plants and weird little models of towers. It’s a world where tiny castles and miniature forests make a goldfish look as big as a god in his watery sky, and real plants look like the one in Jack and the beanstalk! Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Working in Procreate, I cut out shapes from scans of the textured papers I made last week, and began to play around making compositions. I paid attention to careful positioning and making space for the forms, avoiding visual clutter. I thought a lot about Richard Tuttle (fave artist!) while I was working; how his works appear very casual, a bit messy and thrown together, but in fact his pieces are slowly and meticulously composed. Taking a cue from that, I put thought into every movement while trying to keep my work fresh and spontaneous.
My process this week reminded me of a project we were given to do at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen in the early 1980s. We were to create a set of 6 or 7 forms which were simple enough to repeat. Next, we had to arrange them in as many different ways as we could think of, recutting the forms each time, and see how many works we could create with them in a day. This was my absolute favourite thing to do at art school ever, I was on fire with it and didn’t want to stop! I made mine by cutting out cardboard shapes; I used hockey-stick shapes, crosses, rectangles and lozenges which I painted in different colours using fast-drying acrylic. I did all sorts of things, mostly making structures from cardboard such as shelves, pockets, boxes and frames for my arrangements. I hung my painted shapes on strings, pinned them to the wall, and chained them together with wire. I laid them down flat on the floor and made different compositions, taking frottage prints using an inked roller on thin paper of each. I just had a ball, and my space wasn't big enough for the creative tsunami which ensued; the majority of students got a lot out of this project, and the entire studio was awash with coloured shapes and creations which spilled out into the corridor. That in the moment joy of playing mindfully is something more elusive in adulthood, we have to make time and space for it and escape our concerns, but when it happens it's wonderful. I hadn’t come across Richard Tuttle yet when I was at art school in Aberdeen. I don’t know if his work was widely known in Scotland in the early 1980s (the days before internet, kids - they did exist) but it seems to me that he is exceptionally gifted at playing mindfully and with great intelligence. This wonderful exercise set by my tutors back in the day could easily have been dreamed up by him. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! P.S. Here is a link to one of my favourite videos of Tuttle at work if you are interested, and to his fabulous 2007 exhibition at Sperone Westwater, Memory Comes from Dark Extension |
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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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