Progressing with one of the ideas I have for the earth section of this drawing, turning it green. Originally inspired by the Voynich manuscript, while I was working on this I came across some photos of bromeliads and canistrum orchids which bear a resemblance to Voynich illustrations. The top photo is a bromeliad, beneath that a canistrum orchid. Next to them are the Voynich images they remind me of, and at the bottom a Binky Voynich-type drawing. Like many people, I have often speculated upon the mysterious document's meaning, but while I was working on a little set of Binky sketches based around Voynich images last year I had two thoughts: one was that it seems to me there may have been more than one artist working on the book due to slight differences in the style of drawing, but that aside I felt there was a type of innocence about the illustrations which suggested they had been made from description without ever having seen the plants. If the Voynich manuscript was some kind of a medical/alchemical Herbal written during the time of the Italian Renaissance, coinciding with the Medical Renaissance, there would definitely have been a lot of interest in plants such as bromeliads and orchids because of their their medicinal properties. Perhaps there was a great uncle explorer writing home from abroad about all these wondrous botanical discoveries? Speculate on ...
This is how the Voynich-type plant drawing, begun in April, is growing. It has come quite a way since Virginia Woolf provided my first inspiration for describing the notion of part earth, part flower, and my first few lines exploring a Voynich Manuscript plant as a springboard for the work. The cyan-coloured line around the flower-head, seen in the image above, is actually just a guide I drew for a fringed surround. The detail on the left below shows it without the guide line; the right-hand image is without any lines at all - I am always intrigued by the airy, ethereal little marks which come together to make a whole. One day I want to make a whole drawing just like that, but for now the method may help make some good 'aromas' for my Neruda's boats work. This demonstrates how useful I find it to use my iPad as a tool not just for creating work which would make good prints, but also as a space for experimenting and testing new ideas for work on paper. Each element is on its own layer, so the visibility can be toggled on and off: a good thing for this drawing, because I have a few different ideas for dealing with the earth element in the lower section. I may eventually leave the plain linear form as it is, but I will definitely be trying out a few other things in layers to see what appears.
The new style 'lights', or star shapes, are looking good now. Here they are sitting in my Dad's yacht plan drawing as part of my Neruda's boats project; a little boat carrying lights. I'm taking some time here to admire some simple, elegant geometry: these two images are guides for pattern designs I made to produce nice, flowing ogees. Made without much in the way of tools, I have written a bit about the process over on my Binky blog.
Those wheels I drew last week didn't work at all as I had imagined. I tried a few different drawings with them but nothing worked. I should perhaps have kept one of the fails to show here, but they were just confusing me and actually making me feel a bit sick! So those wheels, for the time being at least, shall remain in the lands of Binky patterns. I think there were two main problems: one, they didn't look as much like lights as I had hoped, and two, the style of drawing didn't gel with my current work. So, above, you can see new drawings based on the wheels, but now constructed in a linear fashion. They look a bit like Renaissance stars and are sitting much better with my work now. Here is a progress update on the Voynich inspired plant life drawing, "part earth, part flower" I have on the go just now. It has changed quite a bit, and you can see where one section of shading has been started.
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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. |