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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Working on illustrations wearing my Binky McKee hat, this week I became fascinated with what makes a face. Toggling layers as digital work progresses, I noticed how an amorphous blob suddenly becomes animated when just a pair of eyes drop in.

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I took an almost total break from unpacking boxes from the house move this week and immersed myself in creating nocturnal gardens; more Binky McKee work (I really must get around to updating Binky's website!) The bottom two images read like a cartoon: (1) Trees disturbed by noisy jiggling stars, and (2) Trees organising the stars. The Binky McKee website may not be up to date but I am posting images on Instagram, link here.

​Thanks for visiting! See you next week.

We are getting more settled now as the dust literally settles after the house move. Nonetheless it has been a super eventful week, ending in a visit to the British DriftCup final with the boys, hosted at Driftland in Lochgelly, which was absolutely superb.
My studio is even more chaotic than ever, but I am hoping that this month I will be able to get tidied up and back to work. In the mean time, I am still working on new ideas and have a couple of projects lined up for my work as Binky McKee, illustrator, which is so much fun!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!