The Width of a Line

I finally managed not just to take part in a sketchcrawl, but to meet other people while doing so! For the past year or so it was either that I wasn’t in town, nobody showed up, or I didn’t get the meeting point & time in time to actually get there, so this was a first for me. We started with a quick session just opposite of Museumsinsel, where I drew the dome:

After that we moved to Haus Schwarzenberg, where the monsters move every half hour or so:

And then I gave up for the day (architectural detail and texture are still killing me). But there was the way home first:

It is interesting to compare my dome from today with the drawing from almost the same spot that I did last year, when I was sketchcrawling alone:

Last year I think I was busy for more than an hour with it, this years version (not coming close to anything like being ‘finished’) didn’t take more than 20 minutes.

I just had one hell of an exciting sunday. Or rather, almost two weeks. It was only eleven days ago that I learned that I would be participating in the Open Air Gallery art fair on Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin this year (I had applied in April, and hadn’t heard anything back). Then there were nine days of frenetic art making, learning about passepartouts and frames and presentation in general, and spending lots of money as well (for me, anyway). Yesterday it all culminated in lots of real people in the flesh looking at my drawings and paintings, and commenting on them, and some of them even found something they wanted to take home, and gave me money for it. This art market is a wonderful thing! My stall looked like this:


I had prepared for it on the floor of my room:

And these are some of the new works and works not before published on the internet that I had with me:

Phew, now I’m exhausted, and still not quite finished with getting my place back into the normal order of things. But it was a wonderful day, I heard many kind words, and discovered some new artists myself: Christopher Damm, who makes wonderful impressionist photography, among other things, had the stall next to mine, an didn’t mind helping a newbie like me out and explain some of the more arcane aspects of the event; Jeanne Fredac takes photographs of the ruins of the GDR in Berlin, many of places that had me thinking ‘I’d like to draw that, too!’, and H.G. Winter had drawings and watercolours on show that held me in awe.

It is thrilling to think about those works that are now hopefully hanging somewhere else, and being looked at on a daily basis (unlike the ones who had to come home with me again, and are now stashed away, because there is just no place for display in my tiny apartment).

If you’re interested in participating yourself, the deadline for the Open Air Gallery happening on 1 August is still almost one week away (11 July).

So, last sunday I intended to go dancing. Sunday was Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin, a big parade followed by lots of music events starting a bit earlier than usual, the weather was wonderful in the afternoon, and I wanted to go to this. But my complete lack of intuitive competence in these matters combined with the lack of money (=wanting to be one of the first fifty guests or so to get in free) made me actually go there when the sun was still shining bright. I encountered this beautiful scene (you have to imagine the river flowing down to the left side of the picture):

While I was drawing, other people arrived as well. All in all about three of them, two of which proceeded to fall asleep in the hammocks quickly.

Then the sun went away and it got cold and I decided to call it a night. Yes, I’m a bad party girl. If you give me any reason at all to go home, or just not show up, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Be home and go to bed early, so that I can get up hellishly early, before the sane people of this city go to sleep. On monday, ‘hellishly early’ was half past five. After a while I decided to spend the morning riding my bike and stopping whenever something seemed good to sketch. First that was the view from Modersohn Brücke to Ostkreuz Station, where I could hear the bass from MIKZ pounding behind me (7:30 am).

A little later I happened to pass Club der Visionäre, and had a chance to catch some of the people still partying there.

Further into Kreuzberg I found someone apparently fallen asleep from all the partying

as well as this handsome tree:

Later, on my way home I caught Wismarplatz in the last rays of the evening sun

and went to bed early again.
Maybe I will just start to make my rounds in the morning, documenting the partycrowd of Berlin’s beautiful club scene by the different rivers and canals in summer, when the sun shines and the birds sing to the bass. I really like the bass.

Again, the short poses leaving me more satisfied than the longer ones.

One minute poses.

15 minute pose.

In last weeks session I felt like the one minute poses had the nicest flow to them; every week seems to be different in regards to which duration of pose works best for me. Still I long for session which stick to just one kind of duration, to encourage experimentation and make it easier to get deeper and deeper into the flow if it. Short poses draw themselves so differently from longer ones, and often I need some time to adapt to the different feel and approach when the tempo is changed.

Two sheets of one minute poses.

Ten minute poses.

Twenty minute poses.