Ok, I cheated a bit here - this photo was actually taken on January 6th, when the seasonal cold came in. I just didn't have a nice photo to greet the new year at the time, but this beauty developed on a glass tabletop overnight - so soft and feathery in appearance. So ...
<<<<<< A VERY HAPPY 2024 TO ALL! >>>>>> I kicked off my Christmas crafting this year with this 'card' for Molly and Ben. We had all agreed no presents this year, but to hand-make cards instead. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do as a special card for them until B turned up with a broken hot water bottle. The stopper had failed, unsurprisingly as the bottle is really quite old now. He was about to throw it in the bin when I stopped him and cut out the textured section for printmaking - then the idea came to me to make it into a sort of picture frame. Much fun with a hot glue gun later, here is Molly and Ben's Christmas card! I have written about the one I made for our Mr. T with a description of the materials used on my Heather Eliza blog, more or less the same as used here, except for the addition of a butchered Christmas decoration on this one.
These two cards are a little different from the rest of the Christmas cards I made this year, I was just trying out everything and experimenting, but B really liked them! I thought they were a bit too chaotic and the hot glue gun got too messy to glue the foil snowflakes in large numbers, but I trimmed these two up and mounted them for our cards to give to each other on Christmas day. They are rather fun!
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas ... With my best wishes to all my friends, family, and loyal fans. Thank you for all your support throughout they year! Love, Binks XX I find it amusing to make up pub names by putting incongruous nouns together. It's like a kind of haiku, except minus a lot of syllables! Bee & Thurlestone sounds like a good one - would this be a good design for its signboard, I wonder?
Normally, of course, at this time of year I would be blogging about making Christmas cards etc, but I'm not doing that this year. I have blogged a bit about that - and also about my day job if you are interested in that, over at Heather Eliza's site today, so I am just sharing another spread from my book here for now. This one is for two ditties. This is the one for Thurlestone Rock: If Thurlestone Rock should ever block And everything go solid There'd be no arch where winkles march 'Twould really be quite horrid. One of my favourites! I haven't got anything organised for Christmas yet - must get a move on with that ... What the drawing says. My head has been left behind somewhere in October. I have been wondering why people at work keep talking about Christmas - turkeys, stuffing, steak, and Christmas trees are trending in conversations and every so often a voice will burst into song with a line from Christmas a song or TV advert. I was thinking it's a bit early for all of that, but here we are in December already! Time to get the deccies out ...
I worked two more colourways of my latest pattern during the week. I like to limit the number of colours for such patterns to no more than five, plus a background colour. It partly comes from my training as a graphic artists in the print industry in the early-mid '90s, working with colour separations to produce one printing plate for each colour for the offset litho process. I enjoyed seeing how an image was composed by unravelling the colours. Below is a photo of a little Christmas card I had made at the printers back then, the colour separations can be seen clearly because something I loved to do was emphasise the hand-made quality by making the separations miss here and there. The negative spaces are activated and appear white because of the surrounding colours, although it is printed on a buff coloured laid paper. Interestingly, I bought a new duvet cover from George at Asda recently where the designer had done exactly the same thing in making the separations 'miss', which adds a considerable amount of charm to the pattern. More recently, when I was working on the daisy pattern based on a 1970s neck-tie, I was surprised to find only five separations plus the background, in spite of looking like a riot of colour. Naturally, working in Procreate or any application which uses layers, I keep one layer per colour and limiting the colours means putting a design into repeat is very much faster; if I can stick to four like this new pattern it makes life a lot easier. I find fewer colours make a more cohesive pattern and I enjoy the challenge of working within limitations, which is just as well with my comparatively archaic methods. My Redbubble shop has become a wonderful playground where I can see my patterns on a variety of products - I randomly present a framed art print and a pair of socks today! Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
... Not a comment on events of 2021 so far, just thought I’d be dramatic and make the first post of the year Death. This is my contribution to Folktale Week #5. I know I haven’t put #4 here yet which is a lovely festive pic, but as I said - love the drama. Tarot reading is not something I’m familiar with, but I heard once that the card Death doesn’t represent actual death but rather a new beginning, which is good for a new year. Just to make sure, I looked it up on Wikipedia: “According to Eden Gray and other authors on the subject, it is uncommon that this card actually represents a physical death, rather it typically implies an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore an increased sense of self-awareness. In fact, Gray interprets this card as a change of thinking from an old way into a new way. The horse Death is riding is stepping over a prone king, which symbolizes that not even royalty can stop change.” So that’s okay, then. I like the bit about a change of thinking from an old way into a new way, seems apt. Try telling the bit about royals not stopping change to Harry and Meghan, though ... Thanks for visiting, see you next week!
A very Merry Christmas to all!
It's probably not what you had planned, being a bit of a strange one this year - Christmas in second lockdown for at least 3 weeks from midnight onwards. What will become of Hogmanay? Goodness knows what that will be like! Probably not that different for me, I always struggle to stay up until midnight, to be honest, and I haven't been into the revels of New Year since my early twenties. Perhaps this year I will manage to sneak off to bed with a hot water bottle before midnight, although knowing me I will most likely suddenly decide to stay up this year, just because I don't have to - bring on Jools Holland's Hootennany, hurrah! If you have had to change your plans and miss all the company normally associated with this time of year, I do hope you are making the best of it and finding something to rejoice in. Giant Toblerone, anyone? Here is a cheery festive animation of Cat annoying Dog having eaten too much chocolate! - yes, I did finally manage to work out how to post a GIF here. As usual I was overthinking it and it turned out to be very simple in the end. I wish everyone a very Happy 2021. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! At the weekend I started the seasonal task of making this year’s Christmas cards. I got all the cutting, trimming and white painting done on Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday it was the more enjoyable job of adding faces to the snowmen and gluing on silver snowflakes and a fluffy scarf blowing out in the wind. The process was considerably faster this year, thanks to B lending me his hot glue gun which made a huge difference. I usually dry the cards on all the upstairs radiators, and this year I found the fastest way to add details like the red noses was to arrange the cards on the radiators first, then apply the details in situ. It was good fun! I have rubber stamps on order for the greetings to go inside which should arrive tomorrow or Thursday. The idea is to finish making the cards, and then focus on work for Folktale Week. 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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