'Tis the Season to be Moustachioed

This image has been a long time coming. I read an interesting article in the in-flight magazine whilst on holiday about Seattle Sounders' Roger Levesque. He's sadly retired from football now but will likely be remembered by many fans for sense of humor, namely his 'timbers chop' celebration against arch rivals the Portland Timbers.

This video is not of that particular celebration but of another rather comical one, oh and watch out for some superb goalkeeping. Real fans root for roger.

So, continuing with the facial hair theme, Movember is well and truly upon us and is about to enter its final week. I've been raising money over on movember.com and you can check out my progress here. Any amount you can donate can help to make a huge difference to men's health charities, so if you have a penny or two to spare please take a moment to donate them to my attempt at a moustache.

And with a bit of time and some TLC, I'm hoping to achieve a Dalí.

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

Only Myself to Blame.

A few weeks without a blog and it's been pretty darned busy what with the weather through November/December making work pretty difficult inspiration toward being creative was pretty low. Well that's passed now so we're on the up again. Here's a brief insight into what's been happening anyhow.

A selection of events from this year and last. (Celtic vs Motherwell, Bottom Left)

At the end of December I finally got to another football game, and went to see Celtic vs. Motherwell in Glasgow with my friend Mark and a few others. The game was decent in the first half but the second took a turn for the worse down to some downright terrible refereeing. It was a deserved 1-0 for Celtic and I must admit I never realised quite how epic Celtic Park actually was. After the game my evening went a little downhill when I lost my train pass and then had to get my Mum to pick me up in Perth and bring me home to Dundee as the latest train from Glasgow is around 10 in the evening (I did know this but I just wasn't really thinking).

Luckily after that mishap I having a fantastic New Year I travelled from Merseyside back home to Dundee and I'd just about given up on finding my train pass and had resigned myself to the fact that they were most likely lost and I would need to pay £30 to get them replaced, it turned out that someone had handed them into Strathclyde police.

Good things come to those who do not want.

Another programme for the collection.

Having found my passes Jen and I decided on a small jaunt down to London Town this weekend past in order to cover the cost we had to pay for a solicitors letter.

Sleeper top bunk (with safety straps).

I must admit I'm not quite used to sleeping on a train yet so the night's sleeps there and back weren't amazing and as usual were followed by the whole on a boat/vertigo kind of feeling that I always seem to get from the Sleeper. That aside it was an ace (and cheap) weekend away.

EVERYTHING!

One thing Jen was set on seeing, that I must admit I didn't know too much about until we got there was 'The Museum of Everything' (although, the sign alone shows just how awesome this place is). I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is in London between now and February 11th when it finishes should definitely give it a look in.

Triceratops and I.

And, one thing I wanted to do was visit the Natural History Museum and look at some Dinosaurs in order to satisfy my inner child. This only came about when I realised that in all my visits to London I'd never actually visited the Natural History Museum, very odd. Now I want to watch Jurassic Park.

The Animatronic T-Rex that everyone was queuing to see.

On Saturday evening we caught up with some friends, had a few drinks played a few games and generally had fun. On Sunday we had a trip to the South Bank to meet Thereza and Lucy (twitter friends) for a chat and a drink before later heading back up to Scotland again.

So far this year I've been feeling a bit more inspired and I'm hoping to look into screenprinting once I've actually got some work that I want to print/sell so watch this space. I'm going to post my latest drawings and such in a separate blog to follow shortly so as to keep dinosaurs, museums, trains and football away from art things.

JAB

Photos as usual by Jen.

Part-Time Fun-Time

It's been far too long (again)

After a few months worth of supposedly hard work I'm moving back to my old part-time hours, and must admit I have pretty mixed feelings about it. I'm glad that I'll have more time to myself after some pretty intense work hours over the past months but the change is coming as somewhat of a shock to the system (Well not THAT much of a shock as the past few days off I spent making the most of the sun, buying new books in charity shops and reading Thomas Harris, I guess I've not really got much to complain about.)

A selection of books, read, reading and to be read.

One bonus of all the extra work I've been doing has meant I've started to read again (taking advantage of my half hour breaks) and I've been enjoying it a lot, I haven't enjoyed reading quite so much in a number of years (maybe I've just been reading the wrong things). Out of them all I've particularly enjoyed My Year of Meat and The Moneyless Man, eye opening in their own individual ways and also more recently Red Dragon, just because it's nice to get stuck into some decent well written fiction from time to time.

Now to drawing, I've not done much and I always feel a pang of guilt when people ask me if I've been doing any and my answer is simply "No". I suppose I've done more than I would've expected to though in reality and thanks once again to Jen who has inspired me to do some drawings for a zine we both decided to take part in. I think I started to beat myself up a little over how some of the drawings were turning out but Jen reassured me that it was just to be a fun project and so I did have a lot more fun with it it after that.

Koala in a Tree (for Animal Club zine)

We've had a few weekends and the odd weekday out and about and finding little bits of sun here and there to chill out in. It's been an okay summer weatherwise I guess, and we have made the most of the sun when we've had it with beach trips, days out in Edinburgh, trips to Merseyside and a picnic. I do enjoy the beach but the Mersey, the Forth, the Tay and the North Sea are all bloody freezing for paddling in, even in the summertime (Also I'm not sure I can ever really condone paddling in the Mersey, it's just not right). This weekend we're off to stay at my Dad's in Merseyside again and then to see Modest Mouse in Edinburgh on Sunday. The following three photos have been borrowed from Jen from trips to North Queensferry and the Picnic at Balgay Park (where I made a cat friend on the way home).

Shell Nose (with beard)

Beach Feets

Cat Friend

I'd been wanting to grow a beard again for sometime and in March, I finally felt it was time to give it a go. I must admit, since getting my job last year I was concerned as to what my employers stance on facial hair was but alas, they never muttered a single word about it, as a result I grew my beard to the longest it's ever been. Anyway, it did get a little out of hand in the end so I decided to shave it off just under two weeks ago and had some fun messing around with different facial hair styles. Very enjoyable. I guess I'll grow it back now.

Beard Fun

In other news, I've vowed to myself to make it to a few football games this season after witnessing Everton's reserves enjoy a victory at Station Park against Forfar in July, it was a great evening and a more enjoyable game of football than I'd been anticipating. Everton won 3-2 with about 5 minutes left to play.

Forfar Vs Everton "Souvenir" Programme

Dundee United Vs. AEK Athens

This year's second football venture was on Thursday night to see Dundee United take on AEK Athens at Tannadice. My first ever European game. Sadly United weren't really up to it, and got beaten 1-0. They don't seem to have got off the starting blocks this season sadly. The game itself wasn't awesome but I did enjoy being at a game again and the atmosphere was pretty good at times. All in all it was a good night out with a few folk from work. I can only wish United all the best in the return leg in Greece. It would be good to see some more European football in Dundee this season, failing that I suppose there's always the cup and the league hey?

Ticket for the Europa League game

Room with a View (Park End seats)

Coming to September I will be off to Merseyside to see Everton take on Manchester United, hopefully Everton will have picked themselves up from a poor start to the season and had a chance to build up a nice run of form by then, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It is promising though that we actually managed to take three points from United at Goodison last season. I haven't had the pleasure of going to Goodison since Everton drew with Manchester United

1-1 on the opening day of the 99/00 season (Thanks again, Jaap Stam for that point, we needed it).

Another football related sketch (why have two grounds so close?)

Back in the real world I passed the Theory section of my Driving Test and have now booked my Practical for an early morning slot on September the 21st, nerves are setting in already but I am quite excited by the fact that there's a possibility I will be able to drive in little over a month. Here's hoping.

Also, I hadn't intended any drawing this week but I somehow managed two! I know they aren't spectacular but a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Here's to sun, beaches, reading, football, music, drawing and blogging (and above all free time).

JAB

Glory, Glory Hallelujah.

Hey there y'all. Got the new Ryan Adams and The Cardinals album this week but yeah, to be honest that's not much to write home about...so don't know why I'm bothering to mention it at all. Besides uneventful musical findings I did manage to get ahold of the new Mountain Goats Ep 'Satanic Messiah' from here, now if you've not listened to them before much I'd give it a look in as it's free (well voluntary donation), it's only four tracks long and the last two tracks are sublime (albeit in my opinion which, okay...may be a little biased).

This week has involved already pretty bad weather getting colder, wetter and windier. Oh how I love Scotland's climate. Although reassuringly my dad informed me that the weather on Merseyside is pretty much the same at the moment. This week I will be working as per usual but for the first time in a while I have a Saturday off meaning I can spend a friday night out without having to get up in the morning and instead will just have a whole day to nurse a beautiful, well constructed hangover.

On Sunday I really felt like something from the 24hour bakery so I went and picked up a nice tuna and sweetcorn baguette and a couple of fudge donuts for me and jen. When I got back to Jen's flat I remembered that I had a few pickles left in the cupboard from the week before and to be honest nothing goes better with a tuna sweetcorn baguette than a nice bit of pickled dill, so I joyfully added it to my baguette, much to Jen's disgust of course (sorry Jen) and now there's only one pickle left in the cupboard...all alone. How saddening a story it is. Regina has a song about a Pickle so they must be awesome.

Jim, the loneliest pickle.

Last night I sat and watched 'The Big Lebowski', I'm a fan of all of the Coen Brothers work that I've had the pleasure of seeing and I suppose in saying that, it was pretty much sacrilege that I hadn't seen this one before. Anyway, it is a fantastic film and I just couldn't stop laughing at the character John Turturro plays (however small a part it actually is). He plays a rather flamboyant, cocky, die-hard bowler named 'Jesus' - 'nobody fucks with the Jesus...', so yeah this clip may be a little out of context for those who haven't seen the film but you see what I mean - pure genius.

'It don't matter to Jesus! You don't fool Jesus'

Tonight, I sat and watched the football to wind down after work. The Manchester United fans always sing 'Glory, Glory, Man United' and for some reason I couldn't stop thinking that the Weakerthans have a version of 'Glory, Glory, Hallelujah', now I may just be going crazy and I know it's a long shot but if anyone happens to be reading this and knows that they did infact do a version please let me know that I'm not insane. Cheers.

Right now I'm enjoying a fantastic cup of smoky Lapsang Souchong tea before I head off to bed. brilliant.

JAB