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.

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