norway

We took a short weekend trip to Norway, and thought it was a quaint little city filled with awesome brownies and upgrades to 5 star rooms. Though for anyone who has not been to norway......they LOVE to take your money in every way they can. Now, I am not a scrooge, but having to pay 15 euro for your sheets in a 5 star hotel, and then another 20 euro to have cutlery in your FULLY SELF CATERED APARTMENT is just a little to steep for my liking. We solved the cutlery problem by going next door to the 7 11 and getting free cutlery.

The city of oslo is a very interesting little city full of art gallerys, little cars, snow, and moose. We went along to The munch art Gallery, and saw the painting "The scream". I have fond memories of this painting, my dear, hippie, art teacher, Miss rackham gave us so many essays on this painting.

We went to some markets on Sunday, a very ary crafty market that was in an interesting part of town, and we also had the best brownie in europe....it was amazing. Better than the cheesecake that Kierans sister, siobhan makes, and Better than the chocolate slice that my mum makes, and even better than the muffins Kierans Next door neighbours , Karen Makes. Thats right, it beat you all hands down.

The people are nice, the city is clean, it was bloody freezing, but it was a good weekend trip. Here are some photos.

The sculpture park in Oslo

real snowflakes!

a product called "Bog"

do we look cold?

The Scream painting

Wicklow way for a birthday party

Kierans Birthday suddenly crept up on us, and we managed to book a little cottage down in county Wicklow..... somewhere down there, we had no idea. We jumped in the car on the Friday night before his bday, ( powerkite and board in tow, the new toy) and set off in the dark to find our cottage. Thankgod for our american talking sat nav, (after 18 months of travelling we still haven't named it), it got us there in one peice, with alot of tiny bumpy roads inbetween.

Wicklow is a beautiful county, we did a tiny bit of sightseeing, and Kieran got to have a go on his powerkite at the beach.

Here are some snaps

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Halloween

It was Halloween night, and we went out and bought ourselves a pumpkin and decided to join in the celebrations, as its quite big over here.

This is our pumpkin, and some kids out on the street

International rules

Last year we organised all of our flights over to Ireland to land here in time for the international rules series (Australia vs Ireland). We found out just before we got here that they cancelled it due to the 'recession'. Alas, Ireland is in the thick of the recession at the very moment, and this year they decided to go ahead with it, so Kieran had a smile from Ear to Ear.

We got dressed into our aussie gear, and headed into the city to meet a friend at the Aussie pie shop, Bonza Pies, and had a meat pie before the big game. We were decked out in an australian flag, a Wallabies jersey, and Adelaide crows beanies and scarves, so we were impossible to miss. We had people yelling at us from every which way, " Ireland are gunna win"......yeah yeah we thought, to scared to yell back as we were clearly the minority.

We got to the game, found our seat, watched the opening ceremony, and the game began. It started to get extremely cold, but we cheared as loud as we could the entire time, and sung the national anthem at the top of our lungs.

here are some photos

We are happy to add that we walked out of the stadium pretty proud of ourselves......the Aussies spanked them, winning by a mile, and not one irish fan talked to us, let alone looked at us. But thankyou Ireland for such a good game!

While he sleeps....I do alot of stuff

While Kieran sleeps during the day (he is on night shift), I get up to alot of things. This week I have been lino printing alot of robots, but drawings and finding little tags and cards while out shopping is also a little activity I have done alot lately.

Here you can see my wall is getting abit full...I may just have to start filling some more walls.....

Together at Last

I am sure many peopes lives are exactly like Mine and Kierans.....you work work work, have different scheduales, don't spend alot of time together, and some days, you feel like you don't even have a partner.

Moving over to Ireland has given Kieran and I a better chance to get to know each other, and travel and see new things.

Kieran has been working nights, so at 7:30 in the morning, we play tag team, he walks in, I walk out, and at 7:30 to 8 at night, I walk in, and he walks out at 9:30. I didn't know how much it meant to actaully wake up to someone you loved beside you every morning, or be able to debrief at the end of the day to someone. Us not having the same scheduale, made me wake up and realise how much he does actaully mean to me, and how the little things in your relationship mean alot more that what you thought!! Why and I telling you all this? Its a year of adventure, I never thought it would also be a year of self discovery! Alas, it has been both. Soppy soppy, I know, so last weekend, we finally got a night together, and went out to

dinner. We started out at this cool bar called market bar, that was once an old market in the city of Dublin. My friend becc introduced me to this bar, so I thought I would take kieran there.

We also saw this cool cool thing in the mall. A guy was walking around with a tv screen on his head. It was built into a mask, and had a tiny camera at the side of it, so you were on the tv screen.

We ended up at this italian restaurant that served some of the most delicious italian I have had.

Here are a couple of photos

Sorry, the photo jut wont turn up the right way. But this was the cool guy with the tv screen

Market bar.

Offset Design conference

While Kieran was away in Germany, I went to a 3 day Design conference in Dublin.

I adored it. I want to go back again and again.

There were alot of illustrators there, mixed in with graphic design, photographers, and alot of other creative talent. It went from 10pm till 7pm for 3 days, and I lapped up as much as I could.

One of my Favourite speakers was an illustrator from London, Emily Forgot. She reminded me alot of myself. She wanted to do things, just because she loved what it looked like. There wasn't alot of concept to the beginnings in her work, though it evolved and changed into a concept.

She hated clients limiting her, which is my pet hate. But without Clients, there would be no industry.

She taught me to put your personality into your work. If we didn't put our personalities into our work, we wouldn't have grpahic designers. All design would be the same. I may have been doing this, but realised I could be doing it alot more. Let youself evolve and change, don't think you are just one thing, and you should stick to it. A good designer/artist/illustrator explores as much as they can.

She talked about being stuck in a commercial rut. You do things because you need the money, but the work really isn't what you love. Which means you really need to go and find youself in other work, maybe art classes maybe just your own art diary, but make sure you have that outlet.

She was up on stage, flicking through slides, and up popped some slides that she could not explain. Her reason for it "I put it in there because I liked it". FINALLY, I realise, its ok to do that. Art school, along with the 4 art teachers that I had, taught me I have to have a concept for everything, I need to find the meaning behind it all. I can't just 'like something' . Well sorry art school, but your wrong.

Some of her work, I loved, some of her work, I didn't. I loved her as a person, more than her work. Alot of people come into our unit, and look at my little art/office space (this consists of a table, a chair, and 2 bits of wall covered with things I love) and ask why do I have things like robots on the table, and drawings up on the wall. Simple answer, because I like them. My boss asked a couple of months ago, why do I draw pictures........I know her mind is not one bit creative, (I discovered this after she told me she didn't like toy story 3, and thought the short movie at the start of it was rubbish.....which is totally ridiculous) so I knew I wouldn't get anywhere with explaining anything to her, so I answered, "because i like to". Emily forgot made me feel its ok not have try and have a concept behind everything. The 3 words "I like it" are ok to use.

Here is a link to her site

http://www.emilyforgot.co.uk/

Nate Williams was also another illustrator I loved. He lives in Remote Argentina, where he has to drive 1 hour to trasnfer a file to a client, then drive back again. His work is very much inspired by his sourroundings. and he has a distinct style. He is also colour blind, and has dyslexia......he inspired because, because even though he was 2 HUGE things against him as an illustrator, his work is awesome. He taught me the best way to come up with ideas is to create experiences. Get out there and do things. Take you camera every step of the way.

Here is a link to his site

http://www.n8w.com

I could go on forever about the speakers, but here are a couple of photos from the conference.

Emily forgot and some illustrations she did on some plates
The stage