Tales from Barcelona Part Four

On our Third day in Barcelona we planned to try and make it to the Rambles even though it was about a million miles away.

So we got a bit carried away going in the bars and made really slow progress home, we did walk it this time though, it was a trek but enjoyable!

The Rambles is great, there are so many strange characters to see, It took us ages to find an English/Irish looking kinda bar. When we walked in there was an arm wrestle going on with everyone shouting at the top of their voices, typical! Hard Rock Cafe was simply amazing, the highlights for me were seeing Brian Bell's guitar (From Weezer) and a Jimi Hendrix guitar.

Walking around the streets we saw a lot of graffiti, They seem to see it as more of an art form over there and actually commission people to do murals on their shop fronts.

I made a collage of some of my favorites.

You can read the other parts of Tales from Barcelona here:

Tales from Barcelona One
Tales from Barcelona Two
Tales from Barcelona Three

Finger Licking good

I haven't had time to finish the Adventure 3 comic for tales from Barcelona and i don't want to rush it so I'll upload it next week.

I do however have something interesting that I did.

While we were in Barcelona we ate in KFC and we took photos because I wanted to do this!

Now if that doesn't make you want some chicken, I don't know what would!

I've always found the advertisements in KFC pretty interesting, sometimes very controversial with mixed messages. I thought I'd have a go at making my own and also thought it would be funny to be in one myself!

Also, last week my blog was one of the #oneaday picks of the week, The #oneaday leader Pete wrote: 

'Pick of the “creative” posts this week, though, has to be Robert Malkin’s “Carl Ikbread” post, featuring a selection of weird and wonderful characters with food names, dreamed up in that spiritual home of creativity—the pub. It’s the third in a series, and a wonderful insight into how Robert’s brain works'

This made my day.

Have a good weekend everyone

Tales from Barcelona Part Three

We had a pretty busy first day in Barcelona, in fact by the time we went to bed we had been awake for 39 hours!

We woke up on our second day and the weather was much better.

Here's what happened:

The Barcelona FC museum was really great, we spent about three hours in there and sat through a whole video of 50 best goals. There weren't any seats so we just sat on the floor as people walked past, I think we spent far longer in the museum than the average person.

The department store was massive and I think we might have lost track of time in there. I didn't know what the Spanish woman was saying to me at first but i think she was telling us they had closed. I was un intentionally rude to her, I really didn't know what she was going on about, she looked cross and we were made to leave.

We were walking around looking for a bar to go in and really couldn't find one that looked inviting, We made a standard set of rules for choosing a bar to go in.

Etiquette for choosing a bar in a foreign country

1) The bar must have at least 5 tables inside (Tables outside don't count)
2) The bar must have at least 3 people inside (Including Bar man)
3) The bar must have at least one window (Not just a door)
4) Check for mirrored walls (They can make it look like there's more people and tables)

We found it very difficult to find any bar that met all these rules, it doesn't seem much to ask for, does it? The mirror thing caught us out a few times, we went in a bar that appeared to be massive and full of people. When we got in it was tiny with only 3 tables and one person inside, every wall was a mirror. BEWARE.

Going in hotels that aren't yours can be fun, but also very risky!

On the walk back to our hotel we saw another hotel called 'Mutual Cyclops' which we all found hilarious, it made me think of this.

Check back tomorrow to read about our third adventure.

If you want to read the other Tales from Barcelona you can read them here:

Tales from Barcelona Part One
Tales from Barcelona Part Two

Tales from Barcelona Part Two

Yesterday I did a comic about how we chose our beds on arriving at our hotel room.

Here is a photo of me and my choice of bed

We set off on our first adventure in the poring down rain.

We saw a lot that day, more than i can do justice in 6 panels. We got absolutely soaked to the bone but we didn't care. I cant remember the last time i walked around for 10 hours with wet shoes and socks, great efforts!

The castle is great and you can literally see the whole city from up there, well worth the trek. On the walk up there we invented a game which involved booting a pine cone into a skip, great game! we called it Piney-Skippy which later turned into Piney-Binny with a slight rule change.
 Also, some celebrities have really big feet.... that is all.

We seemed to always end up miles and miles from our hotel by the time it got dark and then have to find our way back using the bendy building. The walks home were usually one of the best parts of the adventure though, something random would always happen.


Like this

If you don't speak Spanish the writing translates as:

'Excuse me fine sir, could you do me the honor of lighting my cigarette?'

I'm pretty sure that in reality the Spanish chav dude didn't say that but I'd like to think he did. My friend Brad's reply is genius, part English, part Spanish and either way makes no sense.

'No Me gusta' means I don't like...

Needless to say the guy drove off pretty un-happy, this happened about once a day.

Check back tomorrow for Adventure #2 and more!

If you want to read Tales from Barcelona Part One you can do it by clicking Here





Tales from Barcelona Part One

I'm back from my visit to Barcelona and I return with lots of new material, drawings and ideas which is great and is going to keep me pretty busy for a while!

I'm going to dedicate the rest of this week to Tales from Barcelona and get everything down while it's still fresh in my head!

That means no Tuesday Trail this week, or people with food names! Don't worry, they will return next week.

Barcelona is a great city, there's just so much to see. We managed to go on a different adventure every day and lots of interesting and funny things happened. The language barrier was also very amusing at times and also just some of the strange characters we met along the way.

I'm going to try and structure things a little and add things in the order that they happened.

First of all to kick off the adventure! It is a tradition of mine that everyone must pose for a 'Home Alone moment' Basically this is the moment that Kevin realises he's sat on the wrong plane. Even though we were on the correct plane I still like to re-create it every time I go somewhere on one.


Home Alone Moment

We made it to our hotel which seemed to be in the middle of an industrial estate with nothing around. Our room looked to only have a double bed and a sofa until we realised there was a pull out bed hidden under the sofa.


But how do we decide who gets which bed?

What fairer way to decide! although I'm not sure I'd thought it through fully, it was comfortable though believe it or not. It took two days for us to work out that my bed actually had fold out legs to lift it up off the floor.

 In four nights I only woke up banging my head once with fairly minimal damage. I also fell down the back once when the mattress slid off leaving me trapped against the wall. Seriously great times!

With sleeping places sorted out we headed out for our first adventure, the only problem was it was torrential raining outside!

Check back tomorrow for more tales from Barcelona!

In other news, My T-shirt design 'Robot Love' won the All Tropical competition last week! weeeey Hoooo!

I'm super happy about this so thanks so much to everyone that voted! Here's the design if you don't remember.

 

This should be for sale on their site soon if you would like to buy it, it might also be for sale on Asos which is pretty cool.

There's some really great stuff on All Tropical, check it out www.alltropical.co.uk

New Commission - Vincent & Zoe

Today I have a picture of a recent valentines day commission I did. The drawing is of Vincent and his girlfriend Zoe and is on a yellow canvas as you can see. Vincent gave this to Zoe as a present on the day, apparently she liked it. Good times!

As always I'm open for commissions if anyone would like anything drawing, anything at all!

I go to Barcelona tomorrow  (Wahoooo) unfortunately that means I wont be updating my blog for a few days, on the plus side I'm taking my sketchbook so hopefully I'll find interesting things to draw for when i come back.

Trail and Food People will return next week. See you then!

Tuesday Trail #005

It's that day of the week again!

If you need to recap on the Trail Story you can read through the other pages here.

Tuesday Trail Archive
- Tuesday Trail #001
- Tuesday Trail #002
- Tuesday Trail #003
- Tuesday Trail #004

Here are pages 11 and 12

Another new character! Melvin!

Melvin features a lot later on in Trail and has become my favorite character so you will get to know him a lot better.

Check back next week for the next two pages.

Carl Ikbread - People with food names - Part 3

Happy Monday everyone, and valentines day....No?.....OK

Hopefully I can cheer you all up a bit with drawings of more people with food names! I had a long discussion about this in the pub on Saturday with some pal's and some new people i met. We managed to come up with loads of new funny names...not that i can remember any of them at all! There's probably enough material to keep me going for the whole year if i wanted.

Awww, Here goes!

 PROFILE

Name - Carl Ikbread
Occupation - Motivational speaker

Carl Ikbread is a motivational speaker that has some really good things to say. The only problem is no one wants to see him and he is generally avoided. His terrible body Oder is a menace, even deodorant doesn't get rid of it. He doesn't mind though, he has good taste which sometimes people just cant resist.

 PROFILE

Name - Chris P. Bakon
Occupation - DJ

Chris P Bakon is a world renowned DJ and headlined this years Brek Fest along with his good friend MC Ash Brown. They're hit single Gimmie Dat Bacon got to number one in about a million country's or something. Chris P. Bakon is currently working on his side project with the Bacon Brothers.

PROFILE

Name - Mel Teaser
Occupation - Receptionist/Sectary

Mel Teaser is a receptionist and works in a large office block made from honeycomb. She doesn't even need glasses she just wears them as part of her look. Teaser by name and Teaser by nature.

You can't have this, You can't have this, La La La

PROFILE

Name - Wally T. Street
Occupation - Traffic Warden

Often confused with a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man wally T. Street is  a MASSIVE idiot. He's a traffic warden, a terrible one at that. He creates more traffic accidents than he prevents.












So there's four more characters, i hope you liked them. Thanks to everyone that sent in names to me and again if you haven't seen yours yet keep checking back.

...and as ever keep sending more in!

If you want to check back over the other people with food names drawings they can be found here:

People with food names part 1
People with food names part 2

A Kind Gesture

Today I've uploaded a comic that I've had in my head to draw for quite a while. It's a true story and is based on a cat that lives in a flat opposite me. Some of you may recognise it!

Enjoy



Basically I felt sorry for this cat, it's owner leaves it outside in the cold all the time no matter how bad the weather is. It sits outside the door all night moaning to get back inside but they never let it in. Now I don't like cats at all to be honest but i have to admit this one seems extra friendly.

One night it was freezing so i let it in the communal corridor to get warm, not inside my flat just the communal bit. Annoyingly the cat started waiting for me every single day, and then started sitting on my car while the engine was still warm. I did a good deed for the cat and now it's taking liberties the little git! What next!? it'll be going in my fridge and drinking my milk, cracking a tin of tuna open, having a blast on guitar hero and wearing my flat cap.

Drawing this made me think deeper into this and made me realise this is very true to life. I think by my good nature I'm sometimes guilty of being taken for granted or letting people take advantage of me.

Well that's it now...This has to stop...The cat's gonna get it!!

In other news I've been drawing more people with food names and will upload them next week, keep sending new ones in please!

P.S I'm not really going to hurt the kitty

Robots have feelings too

I've done a new t-shirt design that's valentines day influenced. I used the same robot as i used in the Valentines cards I designed.

I have given my design the title 'Robot Love'

My design has been entered into this weeks All Tropical competition and is currently up for public voting. If it wins it will be professionally screen printed and sold online. I'll win some money also :-)

You can visit the page to vote for my T-shirt by clicking here

Look at how cute he is! how could you not vote for him? go on!

There's some other really great designs on there, check it out!

Sir Bert Fountain - People with food names - Part 2

After the popularity of this weeks people with food names post I realised just how much material there is within this idea. A few people sent in new names for me to draw so I have a nice list to work through!


People with food names returns for Part 2 and there will more than likely be a few more to come!


Meet today's new Characters!

PROFILE


Name - Sir Bert Fountain
Occupation - Retired Major and Explorer


Sir Bert Fountain worked his whole life in the army, Now a retired gentleman he likes to fly around in his hot air balloon exploring the lands. He wears a monocle and a suit like all gentlemen should do. Sir Bert Fountain is everything Sir Patrick Moore and Sir Patrick Stewart wish they were.













PROFILE


Name - Candy Floss
Occupation - Pole Dancer


Candy Floss works in a night club as a one legged pole dancer, she lost the other leg in an unfortunate accident involving a sharp fifty pound note. Candy can be very sweet but also very dangerous.











PROFILE


Name - Prof. Itterollss
Occupation - Physics Teacher


Prof. Itterollss is a professor of Physics and teaches at a generic high school in a generic town that no one cares about. He's not shy of the Bunsen burner which is sometimes his own downfall being made from chocolate and cream. His students have given him the nickname 'Chocolate snowman'






 

PROFILE


Name - Mel. K. Barr
Occupation - Opera singer

Mel. K. Bar is strong and tough. an international Opera singer and can sing in fifteen different languages including Geordie. Often works on cruise liners and is very well known for her fashion sense and good taste.











Thanks to everyone that sent a new character name in, if you didn't see yours today keep checking back because I still have more to draw!

If anyone thinks of anymore names please let me know and I will draw them. Also I'd like to know who are peoples favorite characters with food names I have drawn.

If you missed People with food names - part 1 you can find it by clicking Here

Tuesday Trail #004

Last week I didn't do Tuesday Trail, I don't actually have a valid excuse for this other than i forgot what day it was and did something else instead! My apologies!
The good news is Tuesday Trail returns today!

If you need a recap, the other pages can be found here:

Tuesday Trail Archive
- Tuesday Trail #001
- Tuesday Trail #002
- Tuesday Trail #003

The next two pages in the comic were a short story that isn't really Trail related so I'm going to jump to the continuation of the main story. I might post the short story at the end once all the Trail pages are up.

So here are pages 9 and 10

We have a new character, Tony the Scarecrow, doesn't protect his crops very well but is a real gentleman. Have you ever seen a flying Snail?

Check back next week for pages 11 and 12

In other news yesterdays feature 'People with food names' was rather successful and I've had a few more funny names sent in. I'll be drawing these and posting them later in the week so keep checking back to see them.

If you think of anymore let me know and I'll draw them.

If you don't have a clue what I'm going on about you can see yesterdays feature by clicking here

Toby Larone - People with food names

If you listen to the Chris Moyles morning show on Radio 1 you will know all about Toby Larone. If you haven't heard about him yet then I will explain.


Toby Larone is a fictional character made up on the show whilst talking about people that have funny names that sound like types of food or sweets.


Listeners were then encouraged to call in to other Radio Shows and TV programs giving their  name as Toby Larone in an attempt to get the presenter to read their messages out. This obviously has Hilarious consequences and makes for great listening.


Listening to this made me want to give a face to some of the funny names that were mentioned so I had a go at designing some of the characters.

PROFILE


Name - Toby Larone
Occupation - Sleazy Salesman


Toby's head is made up from the first block of a Toblerone, I used the letter T to make up his eyebrows and nose. I drew him with his serious face on, maybe his head's about to melt or something. Toby has the ability to sell anything to anyone for any price.

PROFILE


Name - Mr T.Wicks
Occupation - 70s Dance instructor/Teacher


This is a drawing of Mr T.Wicks in his younger days when he was all hip and wore a gold shell suit. He's now a teacher, has a comb over and wears a tweed suit. Interestingly he's a Siamese twin, this removes the need for a dance partner.

PROFILE


Name - Carley Wurly
Occupation - Hairdresser


Carley is a hairdresser who clearly does her own hair, She officially has the longest hair in the village and is famous for it.

PROFILE


Name - Russell Sprout
Occupation - Student


Russell is a snotty little brat, think along the lines of Dennis the Menace. He's very short in height, sprout by name sprout by nature. When he talks he sounds like Zippy from Rainbow. Great kid, always eats healthy.

PROFILE


Name - Emile Keway
Occupation - Wizard


Emile is a wizard and can do magic things like turn a bag of rubble into a bag of chocolate. He doesn't have legs, just floats around.

PROFILE


Name - Jamie Dodger
Occupation - Hitman/Spy

Jamie is one of the most dangerous hitmen on the planet. He is a master of disguise, no one suspects the giant biscuit in the corner! Then before you know it your covered in jam! Something like that anyway!




I enjoyed doing these, if you can think of anymore I could draw let me know!

A comic about Bruno Mars

This is an idea that myself and my good friend Brad discussed in the pub a couple of weeks ago. If you don't know who Bruno Mars is, He's a singer who likes to wear Trilby hats and is currently in the charts with a song called 'Grenade'. I think he was actually number one in the charts with the song this comic is based on.

Not that I'm suggesting Bruno Mars wouldn't work unpaid or do charity work, I'm sure he's a lovely chap. I've seen a few of his hats in charity shops so he's defiantly a generous guy.

My friend Adam was given one of these charity shop hats as a present for his birthday.

There were lots of other ideas for rhyming lines in this comic, some were pretty rude and I didn't feel it was necessary to lower the tone of my blog too much. Although there is one more line that I thought deserved it's own illustration.

'I'd hit Adam with a Spade for ya'

It would be like a battle of the Trilby's! My friend Adam vs Bruno Mars, Captain Kirk Battle style.

If your wondering why he's on crutches, it's a football injury, nothing serious and he's not always that way.

I decided that all drawings with Bruno Mars in have to have the extra outline around them like in his videos, I hope someone knows what I'm on about here!

I'd like to emphasize that I am in no way suggesting that Bruno Mars goes round hitting cripples with a spade. As I said before I'm sure he's a lovely chap, and a very talented guy. I'd go as far to say that I'd let him have a bite of my Gingerbread man.