Kulisse



Winter sketching often means bar or café sketching, either with a cup of coffee to warm up or with a beer to let the lines flow more loosely.
One of the local places i like is Kulisse; it has a dimly lit interior, a lot of dark wood paneling and theatre themed decoration. Also very tasty Flammekuchen.

Naturhistorisches Museum





Sketches drawn in the museum of natural history in Mainz, which is located in former convent St. Klara. The collection of stuffed and mounted animals is quite diverse, with a lot of very old exhibits of nowadays extinct animals. There´s a lot to draw, so it took me a while till the feeling of being in a cemetery sunk in. All those animals, looking at you from their glass eyes, frozen in a position some taxidermist thought was lifelike, in the dimly lit halls of that former cloister ..it was a bit eerie.

Im Buchstabenmuseum



The Museum of Letters is a Berlin institution dedicated to collecting and preserving letters. Some of them are vintage advert letterings, other letters belonged to old train stations that were renamed after the Berlin wall fell and thus became obsolete.
They were in the middle of renovating when i was visiting, so signs were being carried around and rows of letters were stacked against the walls. I really liked how the letters looked in piles and stacks, like a threedimensional collage- very nice for drawing.

Berlin


I very much enjoyed meeting fellow sketchers in Berlin! After Lapin´s exhibition opening we had dinner and drinks in Friedrichshain and on Sunday Urban Sketchers Berlin organised a Sketchcrawl at the HumboldtBox, which apart from great company offered nice views of Berliner Dom and Unter den Linden. It got a little cold on the terrace, so i drew the colourful rikscha that was part of a seemingly random exhibition inside. A grumpy guard told me to not use my watrecolours, so Katrin and me had to finish colours at home.

Warszawa

Some days spent in Warsaw, drawing socialist monuments, restaurant interiors and people.




Apparently, a true Warsaw experience includes the visit to a milkbar,  an eastern european version of a self service restaurant. You pay for your meal at one counter and pick it up at a second one, but only after the cashier has screamed "Frytki! Nalesniki!" or whatever else you ordered. Everything´s greasy, good and cheap.


The Pałac Kultury i Nauki, the Palace of Culture and Science, still Polands tallest building, a a strange soviet landmark.





Dining on chinese food on Hoza Street. Zuzanna is a waitress who works in the restaurant and when she noticed i was drawing she asked me to draw in the restaurants guestbook. While drawing some more, we kept on talking.The other guests left, the kitchen closed, and i made a drawing of Zuzanna looking like a vampire. After many cups of green tea, we left and thought that this was the best way for the holiday to end. dziękuję Dżonka!


Mazury



Channeling the Symposium experience in a Laloran sketchbook that I got in Sagars Workshop, and using Shari Blaukopfs reduced palette of Alizarine, Aureoline and Ultramarine. This is the Masurian lake district in eastern Poland, where I spent part of my holiday. I drenched myself in Autan and sat by the water, the mosquitos and hornets left me alone and i was able to sketch peacefully.

USk BCN 2 + 3


At the Barcelona Pavilion, practicing perspective drawing and making the Barcelona Chair look more saggy than it actually was.


Shari Blauklopf´s workshop in the beautiful convento Santa Anna.



Dining on beer and falafel in L´hortet.


After tiring of Mies´ modernism i drew the partcipants of the perspective workshop.


Overwhelmed by the crowds at Arc de Triomf, i tried to capture that atmosphere of busy sketching.


On the last evening I kept drawing until midnight, having a last Clara in el Raval with Birgit.


My first symposium, an intense, challenging, amazing, crazy experience. Hopefully next year i´ll be able to participate as well, wherever that might be!