Back from an awesome holiday in Toronto and New York, above are a collection of sketches from museums visited in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Probably a good gauge of what my brain looks like when trying to come up with ideas.
An account of what we got up to can be seen on Jen Collins' blog here.
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.
This week I've been slowly attempting to get myself into some sort of routine again. The past month or so has been rather eventful on most fronts apart from the 'Art' front if I'm totally honest. In an attempt to get myself back into gear I have set myself the task of completing (at least) two pages a day in my sketchbook in a hope to let me draw some inspiration from something. Although I am quite lenient with myself, if for some reason I don't do the sketchbook pages one day then they will accumulate to the next. I haven't been feeling too inspired by the things I've been drawing lately so hopefully this may help some. Also Jen's been helpful in mentioning a few projects that I think I'll enter into, again it gives me something to do and hopefully get me moving and feeling a little more confident of my work again.
So the past month as I mentioned was eventful, my friend Dave visited Dundee for the second time, Jen and I had a holiday to Skye with her family and I joined my family for a holiday on the West Coast, Mumford & Sons concert in Edinburgh, Inglourious Basterds preview, a few days of work in between and this weekend I'm back off to the Wirral again to see a friend from Morocco. I've been kept busy to say the least but it has been rather enjoyable.
Today's been a successful day as far as drawing and stuff creative goes, getting into the swing of things again. It's also been raining very heavily, I like the rain though, it's nice to be inside in the warmth and just listen to the rain and know that I don't have to leave the house until tomorrow morning, I sure hope it's dry tomorrow though.
A new painting for the bedroom wall.
The old painting from the bedroom wall. (I'm not a fan of this picture...)
Sketchbook pages (Proof of work!) Chickens from Carrbridge
More sketchbook stuff: Moroccan Water seller and New York street sign.
Sketchbook stuff: Jen's little wooden church.
Note: For safety reasons not all sketchbook work has been included as some of it is terrible and boring.
On Tuesday I got to go see 'Star Wars:the Clone Wars' with Sanna which I was surprisingly impressed with...maybe because of the fact that I had relatively low expectations for it or whatever. Okay, generally the animation was a little crappy and the story-line a little impetuous and childish, but I think the Star Wars nerd festering inside me loved every minute of it. So yeah, it would most definitely have benefitted from being a live action movie rather than an animation but I was in the kind of mood where I would take any Star Wars fix I could get. If you want to know whether it's a good film, I'd say don't bother with it unless your a Star Wars fan, and even then...don't go to it with any high hopes whatsoever.
Tuesday evening we went to our friend Adam's house as it was his birthday, and then around to Jordan's for an Illustration gathering, however we didn't stay for too long or drink at all as me and Jen had to be up early doors for Dublin. Jordan also has cats...I like her cats. Apologies to Sanna for a little bit of photo-stealing here, but I have no camera in scotland with me!
Ah, the Illustration 2008 catalogue.
Jen is David Bowie Sleeveface.
Wednesday morning we were up early in order to get ourselves out to Glasgow Prestwick airport for our flight to Dublin. All of our trains were on time and as a result we arrived at the airport a good few hours before our flight so to pass the time we drank tea read through the 'Rough Guide to Dublin' in order to decide what we would do when we arrived and I drew a couple of pictures of whoever was unfortunate enough to sit at the table infront of us. My fear of flying wasn't so bad as it has been before as I managed to keep it out of my mind for the best part of our time at the airport, however I am just generally a bag of nerves whenever the plane is taking off. All of the Dublin Photos are courtesy of Jen and her camera, yeah that's right, more photo stealing. Oh and I had this song in my head practically the whole time we were in Dublin, well I had the Flogging Molly version in my head but I thought I'd put the more traditional version up as it reminds me of last time we were in dublin for the day and we went on a guided bus tour and the driver was singing it, brilliant -
The Dubliners - The Rare Ould Times.
Me and Jen at the airport.
First - Enjoy some of our Life Vest flavoured potato chips,
Then get stuck in your jacket in a spinning motion.
Thank you for flying with Ryanair.
On arrival in Dublin we jumped on a bus to our B&B in Drumcondra. The ABC Guesthouse was a lovely place run by a couple by the names of Mary and Joseph (I was going to make a 'no room at the inn' joke here but my mind isn't working this morning). On our first night we simply got the bus down to O'Connell Street, in the centre of Dublin and found somewhere to eat, I had Irish stew and an pint of the black stuff (no not Bovril, Guinness). The next day after breakfast, we went around the Temple Bar area of Dublin looking through a few galleries which weren't quite the standard I was expecting to see, but we did visit a couple of nice cafés around here and also enjoyed visiting Grafton Street, the National Museum and a really swell Vintage Poster shop. I really wanted to buy a bunch of vintage posters but they were rather pricey, I think the cheapest I saw was about €100 (£80) which seemed a little steep to me however nice they were. The museum wasn't really my sort of museum, I'm more interested in stuff about the World Wars, the fight for Irish Independence and Dinosaurs (I know, it's quite a range isn't it?) however, they did have an interesting sections about mummified bodies found in bogs across Ireland, which was rather grim but extremely intresting.
The General Post office on O'Connell Street,
where the Easter Monday Rising took place in 1916.
Coffee in a Crêpe place in Temple Bar.
Tea in a nice little café called The Joy of Cha.
That night we went out for a nice meal in Wagamama, I know it's not the most traditionally Irish place in the universe but the food was splendid, i had some kind of noodle soup with all kinds of seafood, chicken, tofu and so on. After Wagamama we found ourselves a good old Irish bar to have a few drinks at, I forget what it was called but the Guinness tasted pretty amazing. Me and Jen sat and talked about pretty much everything and I showed off my knowledge of the fairly questionably, rather cheesy un-Irish music that was being played at the bar.
What do you mean? You don't like Guinness?
Friday was our last full day in Dublin and I'd wanted to visit Kilmainham Gaol since I was in Ireland 4 years ago, I'm really quite interested in the story of Irish independence and anything surrounding that era in history. On our way to Kilmainham we got a little lost as neither of us have any real knowledge of the outskirts of Dublin, luckily the weather was okay and we didn't have to wait too long for a bus back into Kilmainham.
Me and Jen get a Little lost on our way to Kilmainham Gaol.
(I'm not scared of anything here, merely looking at an Irish flag in the distance)
I really enjoyed Kilmainham Gaol, we had a great tour guide called Ciaran who took us around and told us all about the different areas inside of Kilmainham. This tour and a visit to the tea shop and museum there took up most of our last day but i was glad that I got to see a place of such significant importance to the Irish. Anyways, the history of Ireland is a fairly long story so I wont get into that just now.
The Kilmainham Gaol 'Panopticon'. This section of the prison
was apparently used in the original Italian Job film.
'She's a part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor, take her away!'
Sorry that's the Star Wars nerd getting out again. Jen in a cell at Kilmainham.
The Stonebreaker's yard at Kilmainham, The cross is to show where the
Irish revolutionaries stood when they were shot by British firing squads.
Our last night we wandered around a bit looking for a place to have a meal. We investigated a few places around the Grafton Street area and decided on a place called 'Alfie's'. The food and service was great and there was even a nice surprise of a couple of guitarists providing the evening with some tasteful music and a nice atmosphere. After our meal we wandered back to the city centre to find a bus back to the B&B, however we got on the wrong one and had to walk some of the way back. All in all our trip to Ireland was great and i think the two full days was enough for us to see what we each wanted to see, I maybe would've like to experience a Friday night out in Ireland drinking with the Irish and listening to some traditional music but there's always next time.
I really like this photo even though it is a little blurred.
On the flight back i was in a bit more of a state than the journey there, I'm not really sure why - maybe it was just in my mind or maybe it was to do with the terrible things that happened in Spain this week that have been all over the news, I'm not too sure. So I just bought a double whiskey and buried my head in my book. Oh yeah, I forgot to say I bought 'A Star Called Henry' by Roddy Doyle at the airport as I knew I'd need something to read on the plane and it's a great book that I've read once before and being in Dublin (where the story is set) I was compelled to read it again. On arriving back in Scotland we were glad to have a lift back to Dundee from Jen's dad Mark, we both slept the majority of the way back, i didn't feel too tired but I think all the travelling we did over the few days we were away clearly took it out of both of us.
Last night was a nice quiet night, I made some Vegetable soup, we sat and watched some crappy TV and I completed 'Hotel Dusk:Room 215' on my Nintendo DS, Which by the way was possibly one of the most disappointing ends to a game that I really enjoyed playing. Oh well, I'll just have to find something else to waste my time playing now. When's 'Line Rider' out again?
John Alan Birch - Illustration. Copyright 2008 - 2011
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