Wednesday 20 October 2010

Göteborg

So, we've just got back from our short break in Gothenburg last week. Had a great time and would love to go back to Sweden at some point. I'm not really sure what was my favourite part (certainly not the flights) but I really enjoyed being somewhere different than Dundee even Just for a few days. The weather was better than expected too, it was sunny and warm every day and just started to get a little cooler towards the end of the week which was fine as we were well equipped with gloves and scarves.

A walk down Vasagatan on our first day.

In brief we spent a lot of time walking about enjoying the autumn sun, drinking coffee (well, Jen had tea) and eating Kanelbulle and other cake type things. We also spent a day shopping and wandering the streets of a nice little area called the Haga which I'd recommend to anyone who visits Gothenburg.

Sitting on a small dock kind of thing on Asperö Island.

One of the things I wanted to do was to take the Ferry over to Asperö Island - so with the weather being what it was we did that on the second day. A lovely picturesque island but it was incredibly quiet due to it being autumn - apparently during the summer it can get somewhat busier with many tourists using the ferries to visit the Southern Gothenburg Archipelago. Oh, and there was a lot of cats on the island - I think we saw about just as many cats as we did people.

I still make Cat friends, even in Sweden.

Friends.

On our last day we did a little more shopping and visited the Röhsska Museum (Design Musuem) and the Natural History Museum before heading back to the Haga for some awesome Vegetarian food at a small, but very popular café. Being in a foreign country without having any grasp of the language whatsoever has got me inspired to take up learning a language again - I think I would quite like to learn French although, having done German at school I should probably take that up as I image most of it will come back to me, it's just a shame I no longer have my old school text books.

Crazy Pilot Fish in the Natural History Museum.

All of the above and a few more pages of sketchbook based work on a couple of productive days off since being back brings us back up to date. I really loved the simplicity of the Swedish transport network - Something that we in Britain should probably strive to emulate - if only it were that easy, when are Edinburgh's trams finished again? The Strong Man drawing is hopefully going to fall into pace in one of my comics that I'm currently planning.

Tram.
Strong Man.

JAB

(Photography by Jen as per usual)

Tuesday 5 October 2010

A First Shot at a Panel

I finally got down to creating a panel for my comic after sifting through hours of recordings and doodling little bits and pieces, I'm not overly happy with it to be honest and will probably end up redoing it, but a start's a start. I think I've decided provisionally on a title too - 'An Inherent Appreciation of His Own Absurdity', as I feel it sums up exactly what I'm hoping to capture.

If anyone's interested in giving me their thoughts on it all or just wants to see some comical childhood photographs can visit the facebook group page for the project here.

Thanks,

Hope this goes as well as it looks inside my head.

JAB