Replacing the flower circled in white (pictured below) improved the dynamics of this pattern. The first version works well, but I feel the new version above is more lively. I am aware of the fact that I always tend to default to a full-frontal view of flowers - all you have to do is click the floral tab for evidence of this habit. My absolute firm favourites of the patterns I have designed so far contain the simple, full frontal approach (see blossoms here for example). I love the honest cheer it brings, but working on this pattern makes me feel I should try to investigate some different aspects of flowers and maybe mix things up a little more.
I spent some time this week on making some linen textures for the new Voynich/Jacobean inspired pattern. It's coming along pretty well, the two images below show progress following on from the work in last week's post. Because the pattern suggests Indian block-print patterns to my mind (and I adore Indian textiles) I went for a natural dye feel in the palettes.
Harking back to May 2022 and a few drawings I made inspired by the Voynich manuscript, this week I began another pattern I have always wanted to design but never plucked up the courage to get on with dealing with the complexities of turning a drawing into a pattern. I met many pitfalls along the way: I traced the original in Procreate, which was a good start, but by the time I got this far with it I realised I was working from tiny originals at 72 dpi. I forgot they were low resolution, and I prefer to work with 300 dpi as industry standard, or at least Procreate's default 264 dpi; so, resizing and redrawing was necessary. So, once I had sorted the resolution and nice crisp elements I was up and running. At the same time I tweaked the dimension of the pattern tile which not only tightened the design, but as an added bonus it also fitted the texture tiles I have been collecting. Here are three colour separations which on their own have a delightful floating and spacious quality which may well become another pattern.
Four fun colourways in the pattern I worked a couple of weeks ago to accompany the Moth Garden designs. These are the inky speckle textures I made last year - I think the cobalt one (flowers top right) needs a bit of work, it's just a little bit too speckled for these little flowers. I now have 2 Moth Garden designs, plus the clouds pattern as well as this in the collection. I'm looking forward to putting them all together to see how they look!
Designing a simple companion pattern to use along with a more complex one is usually a very easy, quick process, such as last week's cloud patterns, but this one turned out to be a bit more challenging than I thought. The idea was simple enough, a striped pattern in 3 of the inky speckle colours used in the 'Rivermoth' patterns (here, and here) echoing motifs contained in them. However, in the process I accidentally mixed up two different pattern techniques at first, so nothing fitted in repeat. When I got that to work I adjusted the dimensions of the pattern tile to move the vertical elements closer together to tighten the design, and that started the whole process again from scratch: each layer had to be reset with alterations in my handmade-although-digital process. but, finally, a result!
I had intended making another two variations on the colourway but ran out of time due to the faffing which continued for hours. That will have to wait for next week now. Two fun, simple patterns to accompany the busier moth garden designs of 3 March. I picture a set of cushions on a sofa in my mind and imagine how they would all look together when I do this. I played with so many different colourways for the stars and clouds design above that I couldn't decide on a favourite, so I made a new pattern shown below just with clouds, but in all the inky speckle colours I made last October!
A more spacious pattern using elements from Yay Flowers, based on the lower left image in last week's collage. I thought this would be an easy thing to do because the pattern setup was already in place, but moving things around, redrawing and balancing various parts naturally led to problem-solving, and took more time than I anticipated. It's an activity I really enjoy, though, and now this quiet, relaxed pattern might be nice for curtains and cushions, or even as an upholstery fabric for a lovely old chintzy sofa. I like the way some colours are stronger than others, suggesting dyes of differing fugitivity on a vintage material - a satisfyingly vintage cottage mood.
Daylight began its return this week with the sun's angle bouncing up 10 degrees higher than it was at the winter solstice, and a sudden marked increase in daylight both in the mornings and evenings. It is a joy to see, and to hear the birds waking up with tootling and whootling precursors to the dawn chorus. When the sun comes out, it really feels as though spring is just around the corner.
With this is mind, take a look at these screenshots of recent Yay Flowers work in progress: some pretty details come along while making colour separations, and these looked just like spring to me. I'll be taking a closer look at these, and maybe making some new patterns based on them soon. I finally got a linen texture to work with the new Yay Flowers half-drop pattern by resizing the Peru linen colourway tiles I made last September, making the 'weave' tighter to better suit complex designs like this. Above you see the outline version, which enables the background colour to be used within the pattern itself, providing a fresh and spacious appearance. Here I am using the vibrant colours based on a Peruvian hand-knitted cardigan I bought in London's Camden Lock, when I was living close-by in Belsize Park during the late 1980's and early '90's. (The cardigan is still going strong, in spite of its age!) I used the coloured textures in October for my fruits and blossoms design. Loving the faded chintz look on this version! Also using the resized Peru linen texture, the colours have been toned down slightly in this one for a softer, more antique look. This is the version without outline, using only a few of the stipple details on the main flowers.
See also this pattern I made in October using the original Peru linen texture. The permutations of a five or six colourway are apparently endless. Lots of fun and fails this week while experimenting with texture overlays and colourways. I discovered big textures didn't work with this pattern because there's already a lot going on in it, so I made a completely new autumn palette based on a favourite Crazy Daisies colourway with a more even, close speckle which looked fine. In the process I involved the original outline drawing, with the result I now have two versions: one using outline, and the other without, each with 5 colour separations.
The screenshots above show the progress of final checks on the outline version after I played around with the colours. When I make these checks I save a jpeg to iPad's camera roll, and open it in Procreate next to the original psd artwork. Using the drawing guide grid (seen above in white) I check one square at a time, blown up to fill the iPad screen, looking for any imperfections or mistakes which I then correct in the pattern artwork layers. I put a large pink dot in each square of the jpeg image once it has been checked, so I know where I am. I'm sure most of the corrections I make wouldn't even show in print, but the weird thing about printing is that it can either hide or emphasise even the teeny-weeniest halo or shadow - so it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to paying for proofs. During the process I noticed a couple of the speckle texture colour layers didn't tile as well as I thought, so amending those is next on the list. I moved my blogging day from Sunday to Friday, so there is a bit of catching up to do here. Continuing with the Yay Flowers half-drop rework, I altered the outline drawing to the brown colour shown above so that leaves crossed the skinny stems of the two cupped flowers, eliminating an irritating whippy movement in the pattern. At the same time I changed the direction of the green stem in the top left flower. Next, I filled the outlines with colours. It was a nice, clean finish, but took a long time, and the potential of filling the repeat details in the wrong colours was high. I realised that in the long run it would be better to create colour separation layers for consistency in the balance of the design, not only for making speedy colourway changes but also providing the option of adding texture with clip masks. Having achieved this nice balance using colour-drop, I separated the design each colour onto its own Procreate layer. It was necessary to remove the outlines between the elements for use with clip-masks to avoid 'furring' of the lines, which would print with a fuzzy appearance; above shows how four of the five separations now look. Here is the final result - a nice, fresh pattern. I like the cartoon effect of the outline version, but feel the pattern is now a lot more open with improved flow, and I look forward to playing with different colours and textures.
As a note, until now I have just kept textured finishes for interest in blog posts or Instagram. However, recently I have been working with fire-retardant and blackout fabrics which have a plain, bland surface, and noticed patterns with added texture do work well on these materials. So, moving forward: flat and clean versions for weaves and nap, and texture for smooth cloths and papers as well as blog posts - it's good to know! Finally, a half-drop version of Yay! Flowers ! Years on from its very beginning, I finished the outline drawing for colour-drop with any palette this week. I put the trail of links in last week's post, which can be followed right back to experiments with a watercolour sketch in March 2019. Here's a version I made for testing the pattern, filled with the glorious technicolour of my 'Naturals' palette, spiced up with a vivid red (and, yes, I'm still very much into the arch presentation!)
This pattern goes back quite some way, this link will take you to the previous 2021 version where you can follow links right back to its very beginning. It is a favourite of mine, so I'm happy to invest time on it. In 2021 I made the clean version (below) but it didn't occur to me to keep an outline version to make new colourways. It was early days in 'clean' work for reproduction, and I thought I could just keep colour-dropping over previous colours, but I soon discovered the outlines get degraded that way; so the only way I could change the colours was by using curves or HSB adjustments. Both methods are fine, but limited in tonal values by the original. Finally, I remembered this was something I wanted to do, and it was the perfect thing for the January lull before the end of the holidays. Also, the previous pattern was a block repeat and I had always wanted to make a half-drop from it; so, at the same time as redrawing the original outlines I began work on that too. I also made an arch-shaped clipping mask for blogs and Instagram posts to make patterns look more interesting (otherwise the feed just looks like a pattern-book) which I liked so much I have probably over-used it here, but above is my 'River Moth Tonight' pattern (still haven't thought of a better name) looking very bonny in its archway!
Still on the papery mono theme, I separated out some of the main motifs from the 'rivermoth' pattern (last week's post), tweaked them to suit, and designed a couple of extra motifs to accompany them to create two new patterns. I had noticed when I was working on the 5-colour version that each layer looked good when visibility on the other layers was toggled off; the space around each element was nice and I wanted to use it. I activated the spaces with
surrounding elements, adding little houses with puffing smoke and some delicate sprigs in the brown version, and curly clouds and some new flowers in the blue one. Mono versions of 'River Moth Tonight' (I haven't thought of a better way to name this pattern yet) designed for single colour. The top one has papery texture, the two are below speckled. It's always interesting to see how the graphic nature of a design works in single colours.
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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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