Two creatures I drew this week, based on icy shapes which had formed overnight on a picnic table back in January. I thought they were interesting and looked like lobsters, so I took some photos in the early morning darkness with the idea of making drawings from them, similar to the organisms in Before There Were Saturdays. They do tie in loosely with my recent boat/sea/navigation themes inspired by Neruda's boats poem. I drew them in Procreate on my iPad using separate layers; above are the 'shading' marks in one layer which evoke a ghostly and delicate image, with the outlines on a different layer. I am still at the stage of collecting and gathering for new work, but I also see another potential drawing in the photo of a dinosaur being pursued by a long-nosed witchy fox spirit. Incidentally, the photo in its weird winter light reminds me of scanning electron microscope images.
I returned to work this week, but last week I reluctantly had to take time off work due to sickness. I had all the symptoms of Covid: a terrible productive cough, headache, lost senses of taste and smell, general fatigue, fever, aching bones, and felt like I had pneumonia again - but tested negative for Covid three times, so I guess it was just a lergy which has been sharing freely at work. I felt so dreadful I couldn't believe it wasn't Covid, but I suppose it just goes to show there are other nasty bugs. After a week in bed sleeping it off I began to feel better. Not well enough to have any brilliant new ideas, but well enough to be able to work on my iPad in my sick-bed; I got through a lot of Binky pattern-making, and played around with some of the motifs I had been tracing from my drawings, together with recent Polynesian navigation sticks drawings and boat shapes.
Tracing some little motifs on my iPad, I inverted the image to see my lines better. The powdery deep blue background with chalky-looking lines reminded me of a chalkboard.
Some more work on the Neruda's Boats theme this week. Above are drawings made in Procreate (my digital sketchbook) from the waste material left from cutting out sewing templates. The drawings are overlaid with Polynesian stick charts lines drawings. The shape second from the bottom bears tiny notches, which on the sewing template are my alignment guides - that also fits with navigation, in this case manipulating and matching cloth cutouts to form a 3D shape. Below is an image of a boat (overlaid with my Dads' yacht draught plans) made from one of the cutouts, in full sails which are drawn from one of the navigation charts, interspersed with wind direction and extra navigation from the stars. A little asemic text, resembling a title, appears in the top right, which also resembles a boat - that's just a coincidence, it was originally created by exaggerating curves drawn around a printed word in a magazine, which was a real word but now I have forgotten what that was, so it has just become a form to me. I like that relationship to my drawing of a Polynesian stick navigation chart; I can't read that, either. Nor can I read my Dad's architectural drawing of a yacht overlaid on the boat's body here. But I do understand Neruda's poem If You Forget Me :
... as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. |
Welcome to my work journal - a weekly update on drawings, work in progress, doodles and day-dreaming.
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 heatherelizawalker. with weebly.com and it will work again. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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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. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dissolving PeopleA symbol on the footpath outside a local primary school gradually disappearing as the image breaks up and wears away until eventually it is obliterated by leaves and barely discernible. Photographed at intervals of several months between February 2021 and November 2022, oldest at the top.
(My shoes look so new in the first pic, and note the transition to new phone in the last photo). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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April 2024
(Sorry the archives don't nest!)
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A 2013 work book, still very much in use Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent. |