Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

Hoping that you all had a fantastic Christmas...

...and a Happy New Year from Baphomet and John Alan Birch Illustration.

JAB

A Brief Chronicling of the Past 3 Months

Covent Garden at Christmas

I've been a little quiet on the blog front for some time now. So I'm looking to be a bit more productive with what free time I have. Here's just a few things I've been working on recently and the other things that have been going on at the same time.

Pre-Christmas

Before Christmas I was selling a fair few bits and pieces from my Etsy shop and also doing a few commissioned pieces - shown below.

Death Cab at the Academy in November

Spiderman watercolour (A2)

 Batman watercolour (A2)

Superman watercolour (A2)

Personalised 'Let's Build a Home' watercolour painting. Requested via Etsy shop.

'Fluffy' watercolour in situ (A2)

Post-Christmas

Since Christmas, creativity (and work) has dried up somewhat and it's been difficult to get motivated. Here's some of what I've been doing with a view to knuckling down a bit more throughout March.

GO LEAFS GO.

Homemade chutneys

Trip to Liverpool

Bentley and Broda sketch - Via vintageleafs.blogspot.com

Retro QP

Something old

Dropkick Murphys at the Barras in Feb (photo from indulge-sound.com)

Avocado stuffed with walnuts and stilton with side salad

A brief snippet of an upcoming project.

Oh, and if anyone is interested I now have a Pinterest, just general stuff that's cool to look at and inspirational and so forth.

More to follow.

JAB

There are Certain Gardening Skills You'll Never Learn.

Another Christmas has passed and another year's underway. So, I've been rather sloppy with blogging and such over the past four weeks (no change there really) with no reason besides my own superb december-related laziness, procrastination and lack of productivity. Here's to hoping that 2010 will be a year of art, blogs and website related things.

Christmas 2009 was an altogether enjoyable one, I spent Christmas day with Dad doing very little besides going to the pub and spending the rest of the day watching DVD's and drinking wine. I also made my first Christmas dinner ever for me and Jen the day before I headed southward for the holidays and I was pleasantly surprised. The Christmas photos below are courtesy of Jen.

Our lovely old, plastic tree.

Sitting down to dinner at our new table, with my eyes closed for some reason.

Christmas dinner before the Gravy.

I'm generally not one for making New Year's resolutions as I can never really be bothered with the hassle and I've never really felt the need to have any sort of resolution but this year I'm vowing to keep my blog and website up to date with work that I'm doing - oh, and a by product of the whole resolution will mean me doing more work, more often. Basically utilising the fact that I work a part time job by having something to actually show for the time I'm away from the office.

So here's some work from this week - I'm trying to get myself out of the frame of mind of 'forcing myself' to produce drawings which is something I seem to have gotten into the habit of doing quite often i.e. trying to make myself draw daily and that sort of thing. It seems to make me feel less creative as I can't seem to think of anything at all to draw. So for the next few weeks I'm just going to draw what I feel like, when I feel like it without any real deliberation over the subject matter or the frequency. So it's basically what's on my desk, stuff around the flat and stuff I just think of - much more enjoyable and much less stressful.

The second of January was I suppose when the 'resolution' truly began and I started just by drawing some stuff on my desk. A piece of wood that Jen picked up on a walk to Balgay Park that she then used to fashion some buttons out of and my trusty date stamp - which will hopefully be getting a bit more use this year than the latter half of last. I also did a couple of pieces for Cut Click's Mail Art Exhibition which takes place next week - the two pieces were just for fun really, drawn on envelopes fitting the 'Mail' theme of the exhibition. And today I decided to go back to producing some larger A2 pieces (like the 'General Store' picture and portraits I produced previously), I find it rather liberating to get out of the sketchbook and create some larger work - I do find myself sometimes retreating to the sketchbook all too frequently and I suppose it can have quite a negative effect on the outcome of work. So today's subjects were again things from around the flat - Mannequin hands from an exhibition at DCA that we've come to reuse for useful things around the flat and my new shoes. It should be noted that I normally dislike drawing hands and struggle like hell to get them right and today that was not the case.

Got Wood?

The Trodat Printy-Dater 4810

On Her Majesty's Service

Post

Three Hands

Adidas Green Star

So tomorrow I have one more day off before I'm back in work again, hopefully I can be as productive as today - if not more so. I had intended to update my website but blogging and drawing has taken longer than previously thought and now I'm getting hungry so it doesn't look like it will happen this evening. So I'm off for some dinner.

Wishful Thinking.

JAB

Spending December Days Drawing

It's been an absolute age since I blogged last. Not too sure why - think I've been distracted by new gadgets that I have obtained, trips to Edinburgh and Glasgow and also a heck of a lot of work. These are my daily drawings from Jen's 'Every Day A Drawing In December' challenge. I figured that I wanted to put them all up but not totally overload the Sea Legs page with work that I'm not overly proud of. 18 pages in total. Maybe it'll give you an insight into how my brain functions...or maybe not. Here goes - 

1st of December was a Monday

2nd -'There's a room for us in a red brick building...in Denmark' Listening to The Mountain Goats, surprised?

3rd - Some more Mountain Goats 'Do you have the heater on?'

4th - a terrible drawing of Bruce Springsteen prancing about.

5th - Born to love Volcanos (and patterns)

6th - Shame about the weather

7th - Still not convinced

8th - Atop a Moroccan Mountain

9th - Concerning Lead Mining

10th - I Hate Apple Today

11th - Merry Christmas

12th - The Burrow Owl

13th - Owl and Text

14th - Guitar Dance

14th - I'm Okay

15th - Cat

16th - Bring Back The Beard Please...

17th - John Alan Hamish MacBirch

So there you have it. I'm enjoying the challenge, however I go home next Tuesday for Christmas and as a result I will be without a scanner until I return in January sometime. I'll upload as much as possible before I head home for those who are genuinely interested. Also I imagine I will be spending a lot more time blogging while I'm off work for some time...