I had so much fun drawing on the envelope and inside B's birthday card it made me think I should do more of this kind of drawing. I just sat and let it happen without too much thought, my mind simply spilling onto the paper. The invention was just like being a kid again, and B loved it. The card itself was one of the ones I made back in December, which I set aside for B at the time - there's always one in a batch which turns out a bit special.
The children's book is finished, images have been sent off, and the author is so delighted with them that she is polishing up the second story in the series for me to illustrate. In the mean time I am working on my own book, a collection of short ditties and doggerel verses I wrote several years ago, Because it's my own project I will be able to share more of it without a spoiler alert; I put together this little birdie in a tree from the first illustration. It's not as it will appear in the book, but it gives a general impression. I use a lot of hand lettering in my illustrations. Reflecting on the book I have just finished, I realise I have a 'lettering style', so I had fun practising it with this alphabet.
A bit of blatant escapism in the face of world situations getting worse instead of improving, and peace seeming to slip further away - all because of one, single, solitary man.
I have been working solidly on the children's book this week, this is a spin-off from one of the book pages. It doesn't give anything away about the book's contents and it's useful for me to see the chronology of the book's development in these adaptations of some of the illustrations; I posted another one today on my Heather Eliza blog. I'm working so flat-out on the book there hasn't been time for any new HEW drawings, but the aesthetic is so close to my drawings I decided to post it there. Thanks for visiting, see you soon! 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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