HEATHER ELIZA WALKER
  • JOURNAL
  • RECENT WORK
  • SMALL DRAWINGS
  • LARGE DRAWINGS
    • BRAVE OLEANDER
    • FALLING FROM TREES
    • BEFORE THERE WERE SATURDAYS
  • CONFUSED FLAGS
  • ABOUT+CONTACT

10 April: BTWS revisit

10/4/2021

 
Picture
Above is a detail of the small preparatory drawing I made in 2015 for Before There Were Saturdays. I have it hanging in a frame in my workroom and recently the more I look at the top section pictured here, the more I want to apply this way of drawing to the Architect's Garden ideas. I'm not sure why, but I'm thinking a lot again about the zoological engravings of Ernst Haeckel; perhaps because of their symmetry and structure, which suggest a certain kind of architecture.
Picture
As well as the architectural interest I am curious to start using the whippy, scribbly shapes pictured above on the left, which were experiments in a sketchbook of 2015.
​
I think there is another reason for the urge to get onto work like this again: I have been very busy starting a new set of very painterly small floral Binky McKee work with monsters and funny dogs (on those papers I was preparing the other day) which I am loving to bits, but as a balance to all the joy and figuration libre my patient side feels inclined to start something altogether slower and more rational - that's the beauty of being two artists instead of just one, you get to do the best of everything. It's restful and refreshing to change things about, and seems to benefit both disciplines.

9 April: RIP Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh

9/4/2021

 
Picture
Sad news today. Farewell, Prince Philip, aged 99.

4 April: Easter bunnies

4/4/2021

 
Picture
These pressed tin jelly moulds must date back to the late '50s or early '60s, they have been in the kitchen for as long as I can remember. My mother used to make pink blancmanges with them every Easter for years, the bunnies would nestle in a field of green decorated with flowers and little mallow toadstools sprinkled in coconut. As a child I didn't like the bunnies to be cut up, so when offered some I would choose just a tiny part of its foot (!) poor rabbit. The family of five moulds comprises two 1 pint parents, a big sister, and two tiny babies.
I don't think I have ever used these moulds myself, so this year I thought I would give it a try. I made jelly the usual way with gelatine crystals and orange juice (no need for added sweeteners) and filled a 1 pint mould with just enough left over to make a baby one, too.
Picture
I turned big bunny out onto a plate and garnished with shredded lettuce to look like grass and Dr Oetker mini flowers. I can't remember what my mother used for grass, I assume it was lettuce, but I must have left it next to the jelly too long because the orange jelly was infused with lettuce fragrance which didn't taste very nice! I don't remember that from my childhood. It looked very pretty and Easter festive, though.

28 March: Back to work with real stuff

28/3/2021

 
Picture
Preparing papers for painting this week it was lovely to work with real, smelly materials again. A mixture of monotype, tonking, scumbling and colour washes filled my work space with the wonderful aromas of printing ink, white spirit, and damp paper - music to my nose, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor, infinitely preferable to so-called room fresheners. I am adding extra texture to my primer in the form of whiting, much as I used to at art school when I bagged marble dust from the sculpture department for the purpose. I am told whiting is the same kind of thing as marble dust, but it's not quite as grainy; not such a bad thing, perhaps, as my student paintings often resembled sandpaper. I was a bit worried about potential adhesion issues, but I needn't have been because afterwards when cleaning down my monotype plate (a big slab of toughened glass) I discovered lumps of the whiting addition primer so thoroughly adhered to the glass I struggled to remove it with a scraper. The primer itself is acrylic gesso with high flexibility so there shouldn't be any issues with the heavy, card-like Fabriano Rosaspina I use.

21 March: Paint! - and some calligraphy up there

21/3/2021

 
Picture
Oh yes, the indescribable joy of warmer weather and spring suddenly arriving meant being able to get back into my studio. During the winter it was just too cold to work in the north-facing room, hence the digital sketchbook of late. Above is a photo of a little actual, real, paper sketchbook I started for Binky's monsters and ikebana. The freedom, the mess, the fragrance of real materials again! 
On Friday B was working in the garden when he spotted a strange occurrence in the sky - a perfect lasso (or lightbulb?) made by a passing aircraft. Always curious about what the aeroplanes are up to I had Flightradar to hand - look at that flight path! Joyriding perhaps?
Picture

14 March: The Architect's Garden

14/3/2021

 
Picture
I have been pinching some of the textures I use for my Binky illustration on my iPad to mock up a few ideas for the Architect's Garden work. I drew a sheet of brickwork and trellis marks in Procreate 'by hand' (using a stylus like a pencil, Procreate being primarily designed for drawing) which look great over the rough stony texture of a scan of a monotype drawing. I collected scans of the templates work I was making last summer and a few other bits and pieces which can be used in digital collages.
Working digitally is a quick and convenient way to see if I have anything going on, but I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can get back into my studio. It's too cold to work in there at the moment - north facing, great for the light about nine months of the year, but dark and perishing in the winter.

7 March: Playing Cards

6/3/2021

 
Picture
Working on a new brocade pattern in which hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades are intricately woven into the foliation meant a glorious time on Pinterest. Some early playing cards I had already collected on a board provided a good starting point from which to dive into those special rabbit-warrens one finds on the internet. I was fascinated by how many creative takes on the basic design popped up, my favourite being the group pictured in the collage above at centre right, which were made by Arnold Schönberg, or Schoenberg - yes, the composer, and one of my favourites. I had no idea he was such an all-round 'Renaissance man'. As well as being a composer he was also a music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter, was deeply superstitious, and had 10 children.

28 February: On the shore

28/2/2021

 
Picture
Playing around with the Polynesian stick drawings I made last week was as far as things went this week, being busy reorganising my Binky Redbubble shop. In fact I was so busy I didn't even get around to posting this entry until next week. That makes no sense whatsoever unless time-travel is your thing but thanks to the post-dating tool I can keep everything in order for quick reference. The digital wobble is still there in the lines and it's interesting to see linen textures I created for some of my pattern designs put to a different use. If I were to develop this work, the question is, would I keep the digiwobbles? Hurrah, I just invented a new word!

21 February: Polynesian stick charts

21/2/2021

 
Picture
The other day I stumbled across some notes I made about a million years ago on Polynesian stick charts and didn't want to forget them again. I was busy designing patterns so I just grabbed what I was using at the time (hence the linen texture) and made a few hasty sketches - here they all on top of each other and full of digital wobble. Distracted? Me? Noooo.

February 15th: Igloo

15/2/2021

 
Picture
The bitterly cold weather continued all week, but our hardy neighbours got out into the communal grove and built this wonderful igloo!

Read More

8 February: The Beast from the East arrives

8/2/2021

 
Picture
Winter descended in a glittering display of Christmas card sparkle and magical icicles. This is the bungalow across the road seen through our scullery window, which became enchantingly fringed with icicles one night and grew longer and longer each day. The road between us became impassable, resulting in an assortment of cars and vans abandoned at the bottom the hill, deserted in the middle of the road at rakish angles in deep snow.

31 January: Pasty pixels

31/1/2021

 
Picture
A collage of elements is always somewhere to start blue-sky thinking. Things somehow insinuate themselves next to something else in a way I would never have consciously imagined, and a bit of serendipity never goes amiss in artworking. I spend hours in this happy playground, and the exercise steers me away from preconceived notions and drawing by rote. The image above is composed from some of the bits and pieces which I showed jumbled together in last week’s entry. I inverted the image to get some reversed colours to use, the image below displays it’s pastelly glory. (It’s all getting rather painterly, I may even have to get back to using oils again at some point).

I call this collage, but is it really? From French coller to stick, in its turn from colle glue. It was composed in Procreate (the drawing app with so much more!) after ‘cutting up’ scans of previous drawings and inventing blooms, so the only sticky stuff involved is digital glue. Pasty pixels rock.
Picture

24 January: The architect’s garden

24/1/2021

 
Picture
Here were two old wood trellises hung against the walls shut away quietly from the streets outside. He kept putting all manner of plants safely in both beds, from the prettily scented to whatever had crept into the earth and stayed there until spring, upon which time pod receptacles filled with flourishes were in great contrast to the structured walls.
Sketchy beginnings from the story I imagined, a little chaotic now but they will become something. From the initial vision I quickly gathered together thoughts, motifs and ideas before I lost the thread, combining templates from my Dad’s old architectural business, events in the natural world, plants and brickwork. A couple of very quick sketches above and a jumble of elements below.
Picture

18 January: Bathroom window weather forecast

18/1/2021

 
Picture
The bathroom window is old, old as the house. Its pattern is ubiquitous, common to many buildings in the land, but presents something new every day. Gaze at the puffly cushions in each pane, find ice cream cones, fists, flowers, constantly changing as light passes through them. Today cartoon raindrops cascade from glass clouds.

10 January: Looking the other way

10/1/2021

 
Picture
Probably on the phone, sometimes watching TV, your mind isn’t on the biro you use to write a date or a number on a scrap of paper or the kitchen notepad. On hold with that music in a loop, after many minutes you look at what you have done. It wasn’t boredom so much as a vacancy in time when your hand embellished those dates, numbers, and meter readings with springing arabesques, whorls, arrows and roses while you weren’t looking. Or hands. Once, I drew a hand making a rude gesture while speaking with exquisite politeness to some poor guy in a BT call centre.
Some interesting things come out when you’re looking the other way. Keep them - they may get into your work or lead to totally new things. I cut out my favourite doodles and paste them into a notebook. It moves you out of being stuck because what you’re really thinking comes out when you’re looking the other way.
Picture
<<Previous
    Picture
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Picture
    As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
    If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above.
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Picture
    Constellation in faulty double glazing revealed by evening sun
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture

    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    All
    Advice
    Artobotic Vending
    Asemic Text
    Binky McKee
    Discovery
    Drawing
    Etsy
    From Life
    Gallery
    Life And Times
    Lockdown
    Materials
    Play
    Poetry
    Template Drawings
    The World
    WIP
    Work

    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture

    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    RSS Feed

    (Sorry the archives don't nest!)
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    Picture
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    A 2013 work book, still very much in use
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture


    Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.