Add A Little Colour

Just a few more pieces of work I've been playing about with.

Sometimes I feel like I can't draw.

Remember 1995?

Colourful Bike.

Violin.

Cowboy 1.

Cowboy 2.

JAB

Snow Days

I do like the snow, but I'm growing tired of it now. Not enjoying being insular and not being able to drive my car. How do you drive again?

Sketchbooking

A few drawings I've been doing in the sketchbook:

Göteborg

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.

Tram.

Strong Man.

JAB

(Photography by Jen as per usual)

A First Shot at a Panel

I finally got down to creating a panel for my comic after sifting through hours of recordings and doodling little bits and pieces, I'm not overly happy with it to be honest and will probably end up redoing it, but a start's a start. I think I've decided provisionally on a title too - 'An Inherent Appreciation of His Own Absurdity', as I feel it sums up exactly what I'm hoping to capture.

If anyone's interested in giving me their thoughts on it all or just wants to see some comical childhood photographs can visit the facebook group page for the project here.

Thanks,

Hope this goes as well as it looks inside my head.

JAB

Does anyone else miss the fast show?

Right? RIGHT?!?

An Inherent Appreciation of His Own Absurdity.

It's been a good few weeks since getting back to part-time hours again. I had my driving test a week or so ago which sadly, I failed. I must admit though that it went a lot better than I was expecting, which is positive for my next test. Having the extra time on my hands, I should've started doing a whole lot more drawing and such but I've only really gotten down to that this week, I've spent the last few weeks transcribing from recordings I made back in March about family stories that I'm hoping to form into a collection of comics. I've also been enjoying experimenting with cooking again including three new soups and new homemade veggie burgers (also the leftover Veggie Burgers made quite a nice addition to a veggie pasta).

Homemade Veggie Burger on a whole-meal handmade roll with Sweet Potato Chips.

At the beginning of September, my friend Mark and I headed down south to watch Everton. As I mentioned in my previous blog post I hadn't been to a Premiership game in 10 years, and what a game it turned out to be. Unfortunately Everton's season is proving to be the worst in quite some time, but the game we chose definitely gave us our money's worth - 6 goals (3-3) with some amazing last minute action that left me with quite a sore throat and resulted in me not being able to speak properly for the next three or four days.

Our view at Goodison.

Following the game we headed back to New Brighton to attend the Magazine Hotel's beer festival and to say farewell to Dave and Jen who are off travelling around the world at this very moment (jealous much). All in all a very good weekend and I can't wait for my next premiership game (well at least if Everton can pick themselves up sometime soon) and trip to Merseyside.

Our Beer ratings.

Yesterday I rooted out my sketchbook after finishing the longest of all the transcriptions and just started some drawings, some related to the comics idea and some not at all. Still it felt nice to be drawing for drawings sake and not from making myself feel guilty for not having done any drawings in such a long time.

Work space, mid-transcribe.

Over the next few weeks I've got a few things going on. Including my driving test, our trip to Sweden (which I can hardly wait for), brand new FIFA for the XBOX on friday, setting myself the task of producing (at least) a drawing a day and a blog (at least) once or twice a week (depending on whether I actually have anything interesting to say). The latter two means I will actually be ensuring that I now take a sketchbook with me pretty much everywhere I go, something that I used to do but have gotten out of the habit of doing since it was basically just taking up extra space in my bag and meaning that I was risking losing my favourite pens (somewhat of a defeatist attitude, I know).

Grandad affectionately became known as 'The Cockleshell Hero' after crashing his van through the promenade railings and ending up on the beach.

Evil Eric Sykes with Big Hand. Reference for a possible character.

Bat-Man Jacky? Grandad had a very posh friend who never owned a television.

The Case of the Missing Forty Pages.

Jen's St. Michael Cash Register.

Fem Hundra Kronor. Can't wait for Gothenburg.

Back to the sketchbook!

JAB