I've been enjoying scouring museums of late looking for inspiration and I've found a fair bit. I feel I'm on the cusp of a few nice ideas that I want to take further and maybe screen print or just turn into detailed Indian ink drawings.

The pictures in this blog are a selection of some of the sketches from the past few weeks. Visits include Edinburgh City Art Centre, Edinburgh National Museum (for the third time this year), the World Museum and the Walker Art Gallery (the latter two are in Liverpool). Also with trips to finally see the McManus (Dundee) properly planned and a jaunt to London for a concert there's surely to be a few more sketchbook pages scrawled upon before the end of June. I've finally set myself the goal of sorting out and opening my online shop for the end of July at the latest.

Fierce Head o' Hair

Short Arse

Pagan carving on an early christian relic (I added the text though)

Hellhound

'Drink driving 'carving, early attempt at Humour

Collection of drawings from Pictish stones

Greek Lion

Greek Cockerel

Ba, the Egyptian representation of personality and Nut, Goddess of the sky

Elu Mask, Nigerian

More sketches (and hopefully more prints) to come soon.

JAB

A Sketchy Couple of Days

A few sketches I've been playing around with, trying to come up with some screenprinting ideas. Again, still putting off doing more important stuff.

Stumbled across Brook Pridemore recently, give him a listen here.

Cup of tea

More researchy drawings concerning Gods (Odin)

JAB

Gods of Ancient Rome and The Childhood Museum

Goteborg Polis Station

Not so much screen printing in the past few weeks due to lack of decent ideas, kind of wanting to do some larger pieces than the A5 ones I have been, but feel my priorities at the moment should be a website update, opening up an online shop and possibly some small simple prints for giveaways and such. Procrastination is king. I did manage the above print a couple of weeks back, based on a small Swedish Police Station we saw in a Gothenburg park last October. Simple, but I like it.

Jen and I went to the museum of childhood in Edinburgh last week which was rather fun, personal favourites had to be the first room of the tour and the stick doll from the dolls room. Some favourites are shown below. The cars in particular made me wish I was about 6 again (and from an earlier time period than the 80's). Hopefully some more museum visits to come over the next few months.

Junior smoking kit. Go on kids...smoke...

...seriously, even Mickey says it's cool

Rather awesome toy car

Doll made from branch and rag

Due to visits to museums in recent months I've been wanting to do some stuff to do with Roman/Viking/Pictish Gods, haven't had a great chance to do a huge amount of sketching around the subject but here's a starting point. Anyone with any ideas of good places to see collections of Roman/Viking/Pictish artefacts and such, aside from the National Museum in Edinburgh, any help is massively appreciated.

Janus

Gods of Ancient Rome comic (Click to enlarge)

The weather in Dundee has been pretty wild today I think perhaps I made the Gods angry (rapture anyone?). Also, today I purchased L.A. Noire and some red wine, I know what I'll be doing this evening.

JAB

About to Fall.

Nice few weeks, relatively quiet to be honest. Couple of prints done, mostly just enjoying the weather and putting off updating my webiste and opening an Etsy shop to start selling my work.

About to Fall (also on white and green paper)

Fat Cat (development from a Zine idea Jen and I had a while back).

JAB

Chaos Theory.

So there's been a few bits and pieces going on of late. I've been much more productive with drawing and printing which feels swell, but as a result I've been less active on my blog (surprise, surprise). I got myself a new phone last week so I'm finally with the times in that I own a 'smart' phone, meaning that I should be able to be a bit more active on my Twitter and Blog (once I get used to using it, that is).

I have some work for sale at long last, via Two Dolls, who recently opened up their shop in Dundee (proud to say I'm the first gentleman in their collection) so drop in and visit them if you find yourself around the Meadowside area of town. I'm starting to get a few bits and pieces of work together that I feel I can probably sell and so should hopefully open up my Etsy shop over the next few months. Watch this space.

Let's Build a Home

Chaos Theory

Self Portrait

Weathervane

London - A Weekend in 6 Soups

Prescription Sunglasses

As you can probably tell from the drawings I've rediscovered Indian ink and my fountain pen again. I really enjoy drawing with it and love the fact that I don't seem to give a sh*t about making a mess with ink spatters and smudges as I would if I were drawing with a pencil, fineline or brush pen. Marvellous.

In other news, we recently went to London (as mentioned in my previous post) and I was going to write a little more about it but I got a bit sidetracked and can't really remember what I was going to write so - The 'Chaos Theory' picture is based on a super Ice Cream van we saw by the British Museum and ' London - A Weekend in 6 Soups' came about because for some reason I became addicted to eating mostly soup whilst we were away. Damned good soup, mind.

This week I have mostly been drawing with Indian ink.

JAB

More.

So, I've been back in the DCA print studio again, and here's what I've been printing.

Strawberry Ice Cream (also in Mint and Vanilla)

Home is...

Tales of the Briny Deep (a Submission for Lovely Pigeon's Beards and Tiaras exhibiton)

Also just back from London and Pick Me Up, great to see Jez and Lizzy doing their stuff too. Also glad to see a bunch of Tom Gauld's work and stumble upon some awesome stuff by Paul Blow.

More about London to come.

JAB

Viva Italia, Viva Screenprinting.

Here's my screenprint from last Thursday. Something simple and small (A5), but felt good to be printing again. Kind of lost track of time and spent about 4 hours in the printing studio. Can't wait to go back on Tuesday and do some more. Looking forward to building up a few pieces of work that I'll be selling - probably via Etsy and my website. This print is also available with red windows instead of green (2 separate editions of 12).

More to come.

JAB