Booklet 2 begins, bursting with potential for the next 20 cats in my 100 Days Project. I love starting a new sketchbook, who knows what journeys will be explored on those blank pages ... this one is beginning by taking up themes which interested me the most from the first booklet: two-tone patterns, you could say these are ska cats! I hope to fill them with musical joy. I am also looking forward to intertwining more plants and vines around the cats I am looking forward to meeting as the journey unfolds.
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! A selection of 6 cats, in no particular order, from my 100 days project which is going well. I will complete the first booklet’s posts on Instagram next week - I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone! I am getting so much joy and inspiration from it, it is amazing how doing 100 of something benefits work all round, and I am only a fifth through. I hope it continues as creatively. The patterned mosaics and mats I have been drawing with the cats became a source of great interest to me. After a drive through the old fishing villages along the Fife coast one day, I began drawing them combined with buildings inspired by East Neuk architecture on a large sheet of paper. Experiments with scanning and placing elements from the drawing together proved so exciting I am now giving my online shop a complete overhaul full of new ideas. There isn’t much to see yet, but I will post a link when there is enough to toot my horn about!
Thanks for visiting, see you next week! It’s all about the #100daysproject on Instagram this week. I am loving other people's projects, producing exciting work during the 100 days and resulting in fascinating collections. Inspired by this, I decided to join and do my project with cats. The open notebook pictured above shows the first two cats, and illustrates my intention to make 5 booklets of 20 pages each and work through the booklets until they are all complete and I have 100 cats. Below are the cats which followed on each day of the week. I don’t know what will happen during the project, I can’t even imagine at the moment what it will be like when I have made 50 cats, or 75! The only time I have made 100 of anything is when I have made a run with rubber stamps or linocuts, or multiples for Christmas cards; those are very much the same but different each time. I am hoping that by the time I have created 100 cats, my cat style will have developed into something unique, and I always love a few surprises on the way!
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! |
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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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