bitsofbobs

Well i’ve only gone and done it. Been some silly busy months of stuff happening lately. Holidays , weddings etc. Now for the next few months have a relatively clear calender. So…I bought an iPhone…jump on the bandwagon I say. I love it. First thing to do. Remove all the rubbish it comes with then full it with games and nonsense. I thought I better buy some kind of protective case as I carry EVERYTHING in my pockets. I got an air jacket . just the job. I got a clear one as nic has a black iphone and I opted for a white one, just to save confusion. Makes no difference to me…however the cool thing is I managed to tuck some doodles in behind the case. Nothing worse than flashing a big apple logo about…problem solved. Also drew up some doodle wallpaper. It’s here if you want it.

Been listening to these guys alot of late. Done with those pesky lyrics. They’re a thirteen piece jazz funk band I suppose, from Staten island NY more info here. good music to get your work done to, and check this awesome animated video. I loves it. They currently have 2 albums out…Both as good. You can find them on spotify.

Now to El Michels Affair. They have a great album out called sounding out the city which has been very much my summer album of choice. Same idea really all just instrumentals. El Michels Affair are also the wu tang clans live backing band and also have some well good instrumental stuff minus all that swearing check them out.

What a weekend indeed. The scenario, 4 girls are a man/women short for a cruising weekend starting at largs friday 8 o’clock heading into god knows where. This is where I step in…knowing full well I’m rather vomitous when it comes to sailing. The boat was a 37ft and could have probably slept about 8. But we had a comfy 6 including our skipper david…who wasn’t far off our age we’re guessing but rather than owning his own bought just skippered these courses ran from the sailing centre on cumbrae more info here. Friday night we were running a bit behind schedule as the traffic was a bit messy out of glasgow. So we spent the night in largs marina drinking alot of cider and allsorts. Saturday morning it’s up and staright out after a massive fry up on the boat. All the food was included in our booking price and turns out you can’t eat it all…we really tried. We headed up ultimately out to portavadie , a well posh marina. On the way out sailing by arran and stopping in st ninians bay for a wee swim with the jelly fish. I should point out at this point I’d had a wee spew and was feeling ever so slightly rough.

The weekend cruise turned out to be a bit of a course after we got speaking to our skipper who said it was an option. I’m guessing you can do the cruises and just do what you want be we thought it would be a good idea. So learning the ropes, sails, tacking and all that good stuff turned out to be genius as now we’re all half competent crew with a view of becoming ocean masters..ha. The sunday turned out to be well choppy with swells of about 1.5 metres. I was determined not to be sick so volunteered to head down the boat to help nic raise the jib (front sail) half way down the boat stopped for a massive spew…not ideal. I was pretty much out for the count until we got to the kyles of bute which was amazing. Flat calm and sunshine. Few dolphins splashing around. From here we sailed back round to largs back through a bit of choppy open water but I held down my cuppa soup. All in all a great weekend even if I was horribly ill, learnt loads and would def do it again. Good value for money and great fun. Thumbs up.

Last night macca had tickets for the audience of hole in the wall. This season it’s being filmed at the bbc in glasgow. 4 of us turned up very excited only to be told that there had been a queue since 2 o’clock and it was rammed. Gutted we plodded back along the river towards springfield quay to see if anything was on at cinema or a game of bowling perhaps. Not to be, our night consisted of…MECCA BINGO!

My word it was funny. I was designated idiot to go up and ask the wee woman in reception (who’s writing was worse than mine) that we wanted to play bingo but had no idea what we were doing. We walked out into a massive bingo hall which was pretty full, the game had started and their was deadly silence. Eventually we got the gist and were all getting quite into it. I was one number (37) off getting £200. I’ll definately be going back…laughed alot. Although let it be known, it’s near impossible to drink at.

Well now that my old doodle book is full it’s straight onto the next one. Inspired by these doodles I went out and bought myself a new (bigger) sketchbook, some new pens and a Fashion illustration book. I think I’ve got the gist of drawing cute wee colourful monsters. So now my main focus is people. I’ve done figure drawing before but can’t really rattle off drawings that A look any good or B are drawn that quickly. So this is a refresher course on figure drawing if anything. So, back to the pen. The pen itself is not waterproof but just looking at their site now I see you can Use them as watercolours…I’ll have to get back to you with some results. Initial use was it felt really good. Gave a nice flow and nice line control. However I quickly stumbled on a problem. The ink takes a wee while to dry and I did smudge a few times. To start with I followed a pencil line of a photo I took. This was good but it looked as if it had been traced rather than spontaniously drawn. It all comes down to practice. So over the next few months I’ll be drawing people, faces and figures…mostly of nic I suppose.

Been listening to this alot recently…thought it would be worthy of a blog. The whitest boy alive love all the artwork, but more importantly are the awesome tunes. It’s one half of kings of Convenience which I also love but occasionally I find it a bit slow and boring, I guess so did Erlend Øye. Think kings of Convenience but with some funk rubbed on it.. Check it out. There’s a couple of albums out but I prefer the debut.

Summer holidays are indeed awesome.We booked this hotel for 3 nights in newquay. I’ve been wanting to get to cornwall for ages.The hotel made the trip. It only has 7 rooms each with their own balcony over looking the harbour. To add to the awesomeness it has a secret entrance only accesssible at low tide. The food was amazing, all locally caught fish…nom nom nom. Our original plan was to go up and down the coast for day trips..st Ives etc but the weather was so good and the hotel so good we never ventured too far. Loved it.

The actual centre of newquay was pretty tacky and filled with touristy shops and expensive surfer boutiques, however round by the harbour all is quiet and tourists never really ventured further than the main busy beach. The hotel sits on a cliff overlooking the harbour and it’s only about 20 mins walk from train station. The hotel backed onto a coastal walk which took you round the cliffs to fistral bay where all the surfers hung out. The last night the weather turned which resulted in thunder & lightning which was amazing to watch from the balcony as well as that I woke up a few mornings for sunrise. Loved everything about it…can’t recommend it enough.

My summer holidays officially kicked off last friday and my word did it kick off with a bang. Was straight on the train after work on friday down to London. Thought we’d give the train a bash instead of flying. Works out as cheap and by the time you’ve messed about at airports probably as quick. So Saturday we’re up relatively early grabbed a massive breakfast and headed into hard rock calling at hyde park. Bit of a random line-up which I was looking forward to. Highlight was definitely seasick steve…some great banter and really got everyone going. No-one else really matched it the rest of the day. Other acts we watched: the pretenders…pretty good, ben harper…average, lyre birds…liked them, fleet foxes…awesome and finally headlined with neil young. I’m not a huge neil young fan but it was pretty awesome…He is old…almost troll like old but he can still most definately rock out. He finished with the beatles “a day in the life” then paul mcCartney turned up to join in. My fisrt beatle. The weather was scorching all day with a slight break for some thunder and lightning which was pretty spectacular. All in all a fun/cider fueled day of awesome..ness.