No blog last week, because it was my birthday, and a very nice day it was, too, sunshine and barbecued chicken tikka on skewers.
Last week I was rummaging around in my web albums looking for something which was nothing at all to do with this drawing, but it caught my eye and I fished it out and put it in my iPad photos. That was just as well, because now I can find neither the photo in the web album nor the original of this forgotten drawing. It was obviously photographed in a sketch pad, and I think I know which one (2015) but I have hunted through all of them now and it just doesn't seem to exist any more.
Anyway, it caught my eye, probably because I have been doing so much work inspired by the Voynich manuscript in my illustration work recently. There are the large, ink leaves leading down into a taproot which extends along the bottom of the page then, from a balloon shaped bulb on insignificant plant shoot rises upwards nearly to the top. The section at the very bottom of the page interests me most of all, where there is a line of asemic text running above the taproot, and some loopy, curly striped letters made out of smaller roots. It really is a lot of fun, and more where I want to be in my work just now. I am collecting bits and pieces together for when I start some new work once the illustrations for children's book is finished. It's starting to get quite exciting.

This is really a Binky piece, but the aesthetic is so close to my drawings and there are no drawings on the go at the moment, so I am blogging it in this journal. There are bound to be crossovers between my illustration and design practice and my drawings because I am, after all, the same person and the disciplines do link and interchange.

There are no new drawings right now because I have my head down finishing that children's book (in fact, this illustration is a sort of by-product of work on the book). It's flying along now, its identity is established, and things are falling into place beautifully.

By the way, I tried switching to Wednesdays for writing my blogs, but consistently forgot to do it - Sunday blogging is so deeply ingrained in my weekly schedule, so Sundays it is once more.

I moved my blogs to Wednesdays once again. I do a lot of work over the weekends, so it makes better sense to include that in the week's work and not break it up into the following week; then I promptly forgot to post yesterday!

So, here we are on Thursday, with a birthday card I have been making for our son-in-law Ben, who is a YouTuber and enjoys anything spooky, dorky, or weird.
This should really be on my Binky blog (and no doubt it will appear there soon, along with the rest of the card) as it is more in keeping with the Binky aesthetic, but honestly this card is just what I have made to get it into the post in time. A spell of cold weather immediately after getting back into the studio drove me into warmer rooms again, until better weather arrived yesterday. We are avoiding heating the house due to the astronomical rise in energy prices and it has been just too cold to work in my north room space, so it was back to hot water bottles and fleecy wraps on the sofa, where my headspace is different - so here is a slice of Binky for this week!
Hopefully I'll remember to post next Wednesday.

Photos of a parking lot we walk through on our daily amble with the dog, the paint which marks out the spaces for cars suggesting strange alphabets, and the word eep! I had a friend with a cat called Eep when I was a student in Aberdeen.
I'm still not really getting down to any real work on my lovely new paper. My hands have stopped shaking, but we have had a stressful time this week sorting out business with our solicitor, still trying to get my father's estate concluded following my brother's death and making our wills etc. Who would have thought it would take over four years.

​Instead, I have been in a sort of pattern-making frenzy (see my Binky McKee blog) which has kept me sane during difficult times. There is something about the jigsaw-puzzle nature of pattern-making which is totally absorbing, forcing anxiety and negative thoughts far out of my mind, a soothing, quiet activity with a practical and useful product as the end goal. And lots of cheerful flowers to draw!

This week I remembered a large sketchbook with interesting fern work which I made in 2005, so I opened it and was delighted to find the work just as fresh as I found it at the time. I didn’t take it beyond the sketchbook at the time, but I was up and running with it this week. I photographed the page and imported it into a Procreate document and spent a few very happy hours drawing a fern swaying in the breeze.

BEST NINE OF 2018
The posts with the most Likes on my Binky McKee Illustration Instagram account this year! I particularly enjoyed Inktober this year, and Folktale Week was simply amazing. Nearly all the best nine above were associated in some way with Folktale Week, it was an inspired project by the organisers and really brought the illustration community together, making Instagram a much happier place for me.
I am so grateful for every single Like I receive - thank you if you are reading this and happen to be one of them!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Continuing autumnal themes on Binky's Instagram as we go into the darker days of the season, I have been keeping colours warm and deep with plenty of soft glowing tones. Oak trees are figuring prominently because we have piles of oak leaves blown around the garden, which I started drawing a couple of weeks ago. I was attracted by their broken shapes - some had little holes in them - and their beautiful colours which looked great against wet grey paths.
There is also a small cat helping crows to tidy the leaves - of course!

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I know you will be wondering where the artist Heather Eliza has gone, and why Binky McKee the illustrator has taken over her blog and doesn't get her own website, but hey - it is all me, and the fact is this is what I am working on at the moment (and I really need to update the Binky website!)
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I am ploughing full steam ahead illustrating a children's book, which presents a dilemma when it comes to publishing work on social media: naturally, it is totally against the rules to share work for a book before it is published, but in the mean time you want to keep your social media accounts alive. I can, however, share spin-offs from my illustrations without revealing characters, settings, titles or themes, while at the same time building on work for the book. This is what I have been doing on my Binky McKee Instagram, and this week I chose a cat themed week in the wake of folktale week (which I thoroughly enjoyed!)

So here are my cats from the week, I hope you enjoy them. Don't worry, Heather Eliza is still plotting away at a new body of work! And still clearing up my work room following our house move. I am taking a few days' holiday from Instagram whilst focusing on the book and sorting my work space.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Folktale Week on Instagram! Here are the interpretations of the prompts I made as Binky McKee for the event, reading clockwise into the centre:
Small black cat heralding in the week
Forest, Day 1: she listened carefully to the trees.
Magic, Day 2: Philippines folk tale of The Boy Who Turned Into a Stone.
Witch, Day 3: the recent graduates were the worst!
Ghost, Day 4: the Green Lady of Pitreavie Castle, a local tale in my home town of Dunfermline.
Insect, Day 5: an African American story. God was tired after creating the world, all the plants, and some of the animals. The flowers were complaining of loneliness, so God snipped bits off them and created butterflies, which to this day still accompany the flowers.
Mirror, Day 6: I illustrated my own story for this one: Nobody believed the mirror worked, for it remained blank and impassive during the day. However, at night it threw back into the world everything it had seen. That day it had collected only flowers and filled the dark with scents wild and exotic.
Animal, Day 7: The little red fox sat every evening at the edge of the wood, waiting patiently.
Centre: my post for sharing the prompts, 10 days before the event.

For more details, please visit Binky's Instagram
- and don't worry if you are missing Heather Eliza's work - my work-space is almost usable after the house move now and there is new stuff brewing!!

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Folktale Week on Instagram took place this week. It was a wonderful week of my Binky McKee illustration account on Instagram being taken over by amazing interpretations of folk tales; lots of interaction, discovering incredible talent and making new friends. Here are some of my interpretations of the prompts: day 1, Forest; day 4, Ghost; day 5, Insect; and day 7, Animal.
I know this blog is totally Binky McKee at the moment, but illustration work has taken priority of late.
For more details on Folktale Week, do visit my Binky Instagram where I have links to the organisers of the event who had incredible vision and worked hard to bring the illustration community together and encourage artists to interact - it was a huge success for everybody who took part!

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

This week I discovered I really like working in close-toned stripes and had a bit of a 1970s revival, plus at the weekend we began an exciting project rescuing period stained glass windows which my Dad saved from the house across the road in the 90s when it was modernised. We are rebuilding them for a window in the house with a Space Invaders theme, this is the first digital mock-up using pieces of original glass - it should be great when it's done!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I know this is turning into a Binky Blog, but honestly all I have been doing for the last few weeks (apart from still unpacking the odd box from the house move, simply too boring to blog) is working on a long-term illustration project under my nom de plume, Binky McKee. On the side I have been posting spin-offs from the project on my Binky McKee Instagram and enjoying #inktober; above are the prompts Prickly, Stretch, and Gift. Plus a beastie as a warm-up for #folktaleweek2018 which begins on 12 November! The prompts for that came out today - very wonderful and exciting.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

More Hallowe'en themes (of course!) The haunting of a log, Tattie Bogle's love life, Ghost Hill, and a wobbly compass to go on an old map illustration which I was rather pleased with.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Still working on illustrations as Binky McKee, since last Monday I have been on Hallowe’en themes! October fun. Here we have Tattie Bogle, some candy skulls, a haunting in pink, and a Tattie Bogle's boyfriend.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Still on the subject of faces and heads, I had a binge drawing session yesterday. It was tough going at first because I have been feeling a bit blocked when it comes to the human face for a few days now, but I find if you just start with something - anything at all - eventually the frustration works itself through and something inspirational and personal pops up to grip the imagination. After that, you are up and away and the flow is back.
In the end I made enough drawings to post on my Binky McKee Instagram for the rest of the week!

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!