Last week when I was looking for a group of 4 matching collages and only had three, the only thing I could find to fit the mood was the pattern shown above. I took it and treated it in exactly the same way as the collages without thinking. I was very happy with what I had done; the 'painterly' textures and overlays I make for my collages breathed life into the pattern tile and made it into a little artwork. It now had character. Surface and colour variations plus softened borders suggested light moving across the pattern, the way it might on a piece of material. I had found a new pattern thing! I hadn't thought of it before, but just because the tile has to be super flat for printing on fabric, which gives it quite enough texture without adding any, doesn't mean texture has to be absent from blog posts.. The fact is, pattern design tiles just look boring on their own, especially in their flat, clean print-ready form. It's fine if I have actual fabric samples, or a photo of my wallpaper design in a real room etc to show, but in the absence of any of these things I find I have to get a bit more creative about how I show them. I had been making 'sketchbook page' collages before, but felt I had run the gamut with those a while ago and had been wracking my brain for something new. Of course I went on to experiment with this new idea on other pattern tiles. I also divided one of my recent illustrations, Round Robins, into a 'giant 9' this week. I last did one of those on my Heather Eliza Instagram (in 2018!), and a couple of times on Binky's I have posted two consecutive images which fit together in the grid to make a single landscape image, but last week while making up the giant 9 it occurred to me I could also make long tall portrait ones - another idea for presenting patterns. And images of 4 on the grid, and lots of other creative ways to use the grid occurred to me. Paying attention to a mix of different scale, blocks of colour, and types of image results in a much more dynamic and engaging profile page, even when the fall of the grid breaks them up, than just endless one-offs. I even made a new signature stamp and updated my profile pic.
So, my brainstorming weekend turned into a productive fortnight with lots of exciting new images, and getting smarter with my Instagram. Today has to be the last day of all of that - tomorrow, Monday morning, it's back to the book of terrible ditties and dodgy doggerel! At least I'll have an exciting Instagram for when it's time to start telling everyone about it ... Comments are closed.
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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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May 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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