All Around My Hat.

Finally some drawings! I don't feel there's a great deal of direction with my work at the moment, in that I'm just drawing things as they come into my head so nothing really links together and flows. That's miles better than not doing any work at all though.

The picture below was based loosely on this Mountain Goats song which I keep listening to lately (although I do have a habit of doing that with most Mountain Goats songs. Ideally I wanted to maybe adapt this style into a comic of sorts based on the song but I've been getting other ideas that I'm keen to work on so I may come back to it at a later date. Also, it was rather difficult to get a decent photo of this in our studio as the light hasn't been great and it's about A1 size.

A landscape, based on a Mountain Goats tune.

For New Year we had a 'Hat Party', which has become somewhat of a tradition for our family parties back home in Wallasey. The idea arose when we realised some people are reluctant to go full out for fancy dress whereas there's less at stake if you just don a daft hat for the evening. Rules for the Hat Party are as follows, Rule 1. Should anyone get you a drink throughout the evening you must then trade hats with that person (makes for some interesting photos) Rule 2. There is no rule number 2. Anyway, here's a kind of Birch 'Coat of Arms' or a potential invite for our next party. Oh, and excuse my French.

We do like our hats.

It's not really a secret that I like star wars and I recently purchased a couple of stormtrooper figures partly for ornamental purposes and also partly to assist me with drawing human proportion which the below pictures will show I'm not great at.

Ghetto Stormtrooper

The final of this set of drawings is a homage to me losing my train pass last month. I must admit that I do not really lose things but humility is required at a time like this. Hoping I'll laugh at myself enough so as not to do it again. I do feel that this drawing hasn't really turned out as I'd imagined it would and so I may redo it with some colour and less fineline pen.

Loser.

Something I've been enjoying just browsing through of late is this collection of maps from David Rumsey, originally tweeted by artist Tom Gauld some time last week. Have a look if you like maps and hand-drawn stuff, there's heaps of them, I could spend hours looking at them.

So I'm off to get back to some drawings and hopefully a comic and some colour. Watch this space.

JAB

We regret to inform you that there are no ghosts...only cardboard cutouts of Ted Danson.

Good day. Three days left until we set off for Morocco, this year our trip to Morocco will be a bit more "holiday" oriented with us supposedly working on the electrics in a small centre in Midelt for about a week and then having over a week to travel through Marrakech, Meknes, Fes and the Atlas Mountains by whatever means we can find. I should imagine I'll have plenty of stories and photographs to show when we return on the 23rd of July.

I've still been struggling to get any of the photos from the hat party so this collection put together using Photo Booth and Photoshop will have to suffice.

A selection of hats of the hat party...(left to right) 

1. Indiana Jones hat.

2. Jack's Russian hat (not a very summery option).

3. Moroccan Shepherd's wintertime hat.

4. Unknown.

5. The Illustrious and 100% official Moroccan Fez.

6. Bah Humbug hat (origin unknown)

7. My Cycle Helmet

8. MG cap.

9. El Gringo hat.

10. Lou's Princess hat.

11. Jamaican Rasta hat.

12. Australian hat (origin unknown)

13. Mike's Scottish hat (complete with "Flower of Scotland" tune)

14. Another Scottish hat (origin unknown)

15. Unknown Wicker hat.

16. Fluffy Beret (origin unknown)

So I'm fairly sure that it's rather obvious to the reader that I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, what with being able to sit around making photo montages of me wearing numerous hats and all. So when I get bored I find myself drawn towards watching rubbish on youtube and I figured it was probably about time that I helped to dispel a few urban legends. Yeah you guessed it, there are actually no ghosts...just cardboard cutouts of Ted Danson so there's no need to worry anymore, now you can sleep soundly huh? Sorry to disappoint all of the believers out there but there's no ghost in the film "3 Men and a Baby" just a cutout of the Ted-meister and don't even get me started on the idea of a munch-kin hanging himself in "The Wizard of Oz", come on now people, this is just getting silly.

There, are you happy now? No ghosts, okay?

Okay I've got things that I should really be sorting out for the Morocco trip on Sunday, so I shall stop procrastinating and be on my way. No doubt I'll be on again later spouting more rubbish.

This Morning's Song -"The Invisible Garden" by Bright Eyes.

J.A. Birch

A Collage of Senselessness.

"and if it seems like an accident, you weren't looking hard enough"

Hello to one and all, so I decided that the "news" section on my website wasn't particularly effective for updating regularly and so on, basically I couldn't be bothered going in and out of the file uploader to post some fairly banal news. I also enjoy Jen's Blog quite a bit and so wanted to start one of my own.

Today is Thursday as I'm sure you all know and it's July, I am aware that I'm stating the bleeding obvious but I'm just sorting my head out as I type. So to begin, June was an extremely eventful month, to list a few things that have happened, there was graduation, my birthday, a trip to london for D&AD Newblood, an extremely enjoyable "Hat Party" and moving out of my flat in Dundee. 

My Birthday

This year my birthday fell on an awkward day of the week - the day before my graduation and so as a result my birthday got spread out over most of the month of June which I can hardly complain about too much I suppose. There's been lots of enjoyable days and nights of drinking and merriment with friends and family over the past month, probably a few too many to account for here (also the fact that I can't remember many of them), the picture above is from the card my sister got me, awesome (I got lots of swell cards and even a handmade badge but this card was the only one I had to hand at this moment in time). Then from the birthday month came the 2nd annual hat party...

Hat Party

Let's just say as a family the Birch's know how to party. Last year whilst travelling in Morocco me and my Dad decided a "Hat Party" would be a great idea for my birthday party, so much more simple than fancy dress as there's much less dressing up involved and let's be honest, who can resist wearing a fine hat? Last years party went down a storm, it consisted mostly of my close companions but we had a heck of a time. This year we decided that the Hat Party would become an annual occurrence and that the event would be a three pronged celebration - My birthday, my Dad's birthday (as we are in Morocco on his actual birthday) and my graduation. It was a swell party. We worked out the day after (whilst hungover and all) that around 64 people came over...that's a lot of hat's. Oh and we had a mass sing-a-long, we sang such numbers as "The Leaving of Liverpool", "Dirty Old Town", "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Valerie", I'd like to say we pulled it off but to be honest i was rather inebriated and all of my concentration went on trying to remember what chords I should be playing on the Banjo so I would hate to lie to the reader.

This was the only photo i could get my hands on to illustrate the hat party...

Graduation

Graduation took place on the 19th of June (the day after one's birthday), got up early to greet Dad into Dundee and have breakfast with him. After getting all dressed up had to go and get "Robed" up and photographed etc. Felt quite rough for most of the day, think that the build up to the whole thing made me rather nervous and I couldn't stop thinking about falling over on stage, luckily I didn't though. Vivienne Westwood also graduated at the ceremony as us, she only got an honorary degree mind, I'd say I was awestruck by her presence only i found her a bit scary looking if I'm totally honest.

London (D&AD Trip)

Journeyed down to London on the 22nd of June with people from University on the overnight Megabus which I can hardly say I enjoyed. However had such a fab time while we were there that it kind of nullified the ridiculous amounts of time that we spent on the bus not sleeping. D&AD consisted of putting up work for people to look at, looking at other people's work and then swanning around London when we'd finished doing that. All in all, much fun was had by all, at least I think so.

Whilst in London our tutor Mick pointed us in the direction of an awesome comic book shop in Tottenham called "GOSH!" where I managed to get my hands on  two books by my favourite comic book artist/author Jeffrey Brown, two books I'd been intending to get for a while and not been able to get my hands on. They complete my Jeffrey Brown collection quite nicely and I can easily say I have thouroughy enjoyed reading them both!

A small example of how swell Jeffrey Brown really is.

Other...

After London Jen and I travelled ourselves back to Wallasey to spend a few days together before I head off to Morocco on Sunday. Jen has gone home now though and I won't get to see her until August (sadface), however we did have a swell few days, being lazy, drinking, tea, partying, wearing hats, eating cake, playing Nintendo, watching films, eating pasta, walking on the beach, going to Liverpool, going to Museums, going to Manchester and exploring rock pools. Fun times (:

Anyway, I should wrap this up now, just wanted to fill out what happened for the whole of June in one go, wanted to write it down somewhere, it has been a highly enjoyably month and July promises much of the same! 

Today's mood summed up in a song "King of Carrot Flowers Part 1" by Neutral Milk Hotel

Sincerely, Faithfully, Lovingly and whatever else,

J.A. Birch