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.
It may look like a digression from the Neruda's boats and my Dad's drawings themes, but this photo I took 4 weeks ago on the picnic bench in the early morning frosts outside the workshops look like lobsters, and I think I might work them into drawings to fit in with the boat themes and the Fife coastal fishing villages close by to where I live. They may eventually fit into the boats project.
It was only last month when I photographed this, but what a change in the daylight those weeks have blessed us with - we are now in early spring, and I am now driving in daylight in the mornings. The days are getting steadily brighter now, so much so that I got out my Dad's plan drawings for a sailing yacht designed by one of his friends. Following on from Neruda's boats and talking about drawing templates, these are the beautiful mathematical curves I mentioned previously, a long-time source of fascination to me. It was good to see them spread out on the floor over white sheets of paper to photograph, see the work of my Dad's hand once more, and to get into detail with the camera on my phone. These days I feel I am looking at them with completely new eyes ... ... and I never realised ships have buttocks! I had never noticed this until the camera picked out the small lettering so clearly. We live and learn.
The incredible ice patterns I photographed during last month's cold snap got me collecting a few of my favourite photos of ice and other crystals (bleach residue in the sink) taken over the last 8 years.
When I was a little girl my Dad was a keen photographer. In those days it was all captured on black and white film developed at home in a darkroom. He often worked with his friend who was a professional photographer living close by, and one day he was cleaning the developing tank in his friend's studio and spotted ferny crystals which had formed at the base. He took a contact print directly onto the photographic paper and developed it. It was absolutely extraordinary and at the time I thought it was the most enchanting thing I had ever seen, complex and delicate white crystals against black (I also always thought it was a photo of ice on a window until my Dad corrected me years later). Unfortunately the print he made has been lost, but it's still in my mind, and I am constantly looking for a replacement. These crystals come very close. I have been thinking a lot about how to make them into drawings, here are some examples of my efforts to translate them digitally and by hand on paper. Somehow I really want to get inside those amazing structures. The inverted image top left below is interesting, and below right is one of my Binky illustrations of a wintry cat. Already it seems to me the light is changing, reflections are brighter, and a ray of sunshine is going a longer distance now than before the solstice. I don't know why, because the angle of the sun hasn't changed, if anything it's a degree lower than on the solstice; and sunrise is even a few minutes later. However, solar noon and sunset are slowly growing later by the day and we are approaching perihelion day on the 4th January - I image those factors contribute to the subtle change.
In the mean time, since Christmas B and I received lots more cards in the post, only delayed slightly by the mail strikes - further adding to my guilt-trip because I didn't send any cards out for the first time in my life this festive season. What an old Scrooge I have been, and I can only apologise and express my gratitude for the physical ones which arrived on my doorstep as well as the calls and messages from others. Anyway, I wish all of you a very happy 2023 and thank you all for your kind thoughts and Christmas greetings. I'll make sure that my cards for Christmas 2023 are bigger, better, more sparkly, and made on time to send out this year! There's a high resolution (Dad joke, I've been pulling too many Christmas crackers). On Tuesday morning we woke up to a winter wonderland: our windows figured with ice landscapes from a different world, all on the insides of our windows. Yes, the insides - it was very cold. Like most people we had been trying not to use our heating as we went into winter because of soaring energy bills, but when overnight forecasts for -6°c and -7.5°c arrived we set a couple of radiators to come on for an hour in the morning before getting out of bed. Even with the radiators on, this still happened - it was like living inside a Christmas card. Oh well, Christmas is coming, after all ... The cold continued for nearly the whole week (falling just one day short of our entitlement to receive cold weather payments from the government). Our windows in the house didn't start to clear of frost until the weekend. It was a dark but sparkling week of scraping ice off the car and defrosting it at 6.30every morning so I could get to work on time. I am eternally grateful for B's help in doing this good deed every day.
It has been one of those weeks when there is something on every day with a meeting arranging work, doctors' appointments, the optician, Covid booster, etc. I had grabbed an old exhibition catalogue of David Nash sculptures made between 1971 - 1990 to browse in waiting rooms etc. I haven't looked at this book for years, so the elemental nature of the work really grabbed me. I particularly like this piece from 1990 titled Comet Ball. The fantastic rugged comet trail and weight of the ball causing fire where it has apparently hit Earth is wonderful - I don't know if that's what it's supposed to be or if Nash was simply scorching the wooden ball, but I love the idea. Later in the week I was doing some sewing at my machine and turned the work over to snip off loose threads, and the threads accidentally streaming off the little circles of stitches reminded me of the Nash work.
It's giving me ideas, it's been a while since I last added sewing to a drawing - I'm thinking it might be time to revisit that! Every spare minute sandwiched between my training course and home life just now is being spent on drawings for the Christmas exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh, as the handing-in deadline approaches fast. Titles for the works are beginning to come to mind as the drawings progress. This one is definitely about volcanoes and primordial life forming in plumes of red and ash grey vapours. The paper is Awagami Kozo, the pens are fine mapping pens, and the shadowy shapes are monoprints taken by rolling a small inked roller over bits of plants in oil-based relief printing ink. The training course, by the way, is brilliant! This week I have been working in a sewing cabin learning how to thread and drive industrial sewing machines to overlock, trim, embroider and construct cushions and seat covers. Basic skills, but I'm hooked. I never realised how physical sewing is - always seemingly associated with a gentle female pastime, I have found in fact I need leg muscles of steel and a lot of stamina to control those machines and get through the daily work-load. Night cramps in muscle groups unaccustomed to such work were painful. Respect to all those machinists who churn out our Primark garments.
Next week I get training in woodwork skills ... exciting! The great lady pictured at Balmoral, where she passed away aged 96 today. Words cannot express how I feel; for my whole life, and the lives of millions of others, she has been present at our centre as the essence of Britishness as our calm, sensible, durable rock through hard times and good times.
RIP our beautiful Queen, you will be sorely missed. I didn't get around to posting last weekend because of this! We had a houseful staying for Dorifest held at Driftland, which is only 10 minutes drive away from us. A team of five and three cars taking part in the festival pitched up last Friday afternoon to stay the weekend. Spirits were high and it was a tremendously exciting weekend for B and me. I could not have asked for better house guests, a nicer bunch of lads (and a lass) could not be met, and the topping on the cake was that they came away from Dorifest with a trophy. They have put together a brilliant fun video on YouTube of them driving in the competition, and also their journey to Scotland which I hope was a little more sedate.
I came across this panel in B's painting shed the other day, on the back of one of his paint tests. He makes his own paint, and tests the colours in swatches painted on small gessoed boards on stretchers. The swatch was facing the wall, revealing this small abandoned painting, scraped off, turned over and repurposed, with the stretcher now forming a deep frame around the picture. I would actually hang it on the wall just as it is. I love the texture and colours, and at some time soon I think this may form a background to an illustration. An update on my avocado roots this week - they could really do with being potted now as the leaves are beginning to look sad, no doubt lacking nutrients. See their development since February here and right at the beginning in July last year here ... I can't believe the force of nature hidden in the stones. The jar in the centre's stone split in half, leaving just what's showing above.
The drawing above is a late night Procreate doodle inspired by a rootball which came out of a pot in the garden - I must have been watching too much news recently. I think it would make a wonderful etching.
One early morning this week B found a blue balloon mysteriously drifting about our garden. He tied it to the washing line in front of our shed painted in blue; the different blues looked amazing together, so I took a photo which was a good thing because the balloon rapidly deflated throughout the day between the bed sheets I laundered that day and hung around it.
My guess is that a child was carrying it on her way to the local primary school, perhaps for some kiddy celebration, and had let it go and lost it. It put me in mind of the marvellous Ivor Cutler's poem The Shapely Balloon, set to his harmonium playing: "Mammy, I want a balloon" "A balloon? What do you want a balloon for, son?" "To play with" "To play with? Do you think I'm going to lay out good money so that you can play with a balloon? Certainly not. Start again" "Mammy, I want a balloon" "A balloon? What for, son?" "I'm hungry" "Alright. Here's thrupence, go and buy one" "Thank you my mummy" ... ... "I'm hungry for a balloon. That's not going to assuage my hunger" "Assuage? Don't you use these dirty words in my shop. Get out, go on, get out of my shop! Assuage indeed, I don't know what the younger generation is coming to!" "Mammy, look. A thrupenny balloon. It's the right shape, but look at the size!" "That's not going to assuage your hunger" "That's what I said to the man, and he got furious and drove me out of the shop and told me not to use these words. What'll I do, mammy?" "Why don't you sit down and shut up? Can't you see I'm writing your auntie Mildred a poem for her wooden anniversary?" The full story is well worth a visit and can be found here . I was most fortunate to have attended an Ivor Cutler concert at Edinburgh University in the late 1970s, it was quite the wondrous event. It's been a bit noisy around here! Since the first week in February all the street lamps have been replaced, the pavements dug up and resurfaced, and now it's the road's turn for the treatment. It hasn't been done properly since my family moved into this house in 1971 and the road and walkways have been literally a crumbling patchwork of old concrete for years, bad for tyres and dangerous to walk - it really needed doing! This is the view from my work room this morning.
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. |
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. |