Play in Progress

In April I had the pleasure of spending a week in London, in part to attend a workshop at The Prince’s Drawing School, in part to hand in my application portfolio there. I decided to leave most of my watercolors at home for the whole trip (which later took me to Mallorca as well). I might not touch them again for the rest of the year — not because I don’t like working in color, but because I feel focusing on lines and dark and light only for a while is a good exercise for me. Colors are seductive, but colorful things get pretty maybe a bit too easily. Anyway, in London I just stuck with my pencil. Less decisions to make about drawing media equals more time and attention for actually looking. Or so I hope.

The first two are sketches of the skyline passing me by while sitting in a bus. I did a whole bunch of them, and would love to do more. Suddenly the chronic congestion on London’s streets is something I can welcome instead of being annoyed by it, as it gives me more time to finish a line…

Spending some weeks in a little hut in the garden of a friend on Mallorca, I had a chance to delve into the pleasure of working in series, looking at the same thing again and again. The irises in particular caught my eye. Here is one of them.

Some of the faces in close up:

The complete sketches:

I’ve drawn this place many times before, still far from being tired, or feeling I’ve really done it justice. So much still left to figure out! And it looks different every day…

(Only 3 more days left to visit the ‘Dezembersalon’ at Galerie Taube in Berlin Charlottenburg, featuring two watercolors of yours truly among a divers selection of representational art.)

I started with watercolour only, but then went back over them with the pencil once I had done the pencil only ones (hence the double numbering).

…or what I did this Christmas. Not literally all of these were done at less than 0°C, but some obviously were.

In November I was invited to sketch people floating in water and listening to music during the Liquid Sound Festival (warning: that link opens with soundbites) in Bad Sulza. Such a pleasure!

At when I ran out of paper late in the night I did some floating myself…

And some details:

This morning around nine I sat in the sun, making a sketch, when I noticed some annoying clumps in my paint. First I wondered if some dirt had gotten in my palette; but no, it is just officially too cold now to make watercolor sketches outside in the morning without heat bags.

I will need to get some cheap booze later today, too, to put in my waterbrushes.