Play in Progress

While hitchhiking from Aberystwyth to Bala I happened upon a wonderful used bookshop in Machynlleth, and found a book on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s drawings. I had been looking for one on amazon.de for a long time, but never found anything I could actually afford. Even in the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, which houses the largest collection of his drawings and sketchbooks (and has now thankfully made them available online), I had not been able to find a good, or even just any, book about them! But now I had, and you can tell I spent a lot of time looking at his plant drawings the night before I did some of those below…

During my days in Liverpool in August 2011 it rained all the time—in my memory I had to abandon nearly each and every outdoor sketch because of the rain picking up again. That gave me a lot of time to spend in museums, though, especially the wonderful Walker Art Gallery and the Maritime Museum. I had hitchhiked to Liverpool from Glencoe in Scotland on the day that the burning carpentry shop on Tottenham High Road was on the front page of the Guardian. By the time I was in Liverpool the rain had mostly quieted it down, but I was startled to find that both the International Slavery Museum and the Walker Art Gallery had special exhibitions on that coincided strangely with what had just happened outside—the one about the Toxteth riots of 1981, the other about art in Liverpool in the context of the general strike of 1911.

Page 10.

These are from the same sketchbook as the last posting, but it is a twofold sketchbook: It is half made from very bright, almost blueish Dorée 200 drawing paper, whose color I love, which is a good paper for dry media, and I have a 50 m roll lying around under my desk which will last me forever (and only cost around 70 €). This paper also sucks beyond the telling of it for watercolor or even slight ink washes, and the brush pen doesn’t go on quite as smooth as I would like. So the other half of the book is made of my favourite drawing paper ever, the Fabriano Disegno F4, which is a tiny bit warmer in its color, also very smooth, and although it isn’t advertised for wet media at all, takes them surprisingly well. In fact, for most things I prefer it to ‘real’ watercolor paper even if working heavily with watercolor. It is also way more expensive than the Dorée, and I’m buying it in loose sheets these days because I can’t afford the big packs. Oh well. Anyway, I’m using this book starting from both sides (the page numbers with ‘b’ are from the Disegno side, the regular numbers from the Dorée side), and will meet myself in the middle somewhere. I still like the format. I can actually imagine sticking to this square size for a couple of years.

These landscape sketches are inspired by the wonderful drawings of Fred, by the way, like this one. So many possibilities lie in his treatment of wash and bleeding, so much still to learn for me! But some of it might have to wait for next winter, when the landscape gets empty again and the trees bare.

P.S. If you click on page 05b you’ll see some strange textures in the brown on the right side. That’s what happens when a wash freezes on the page. I love it, I just wish I could play around with that effect more without freezing myself. I’ve drawn this place many times before, and encountered the same problem last winter, as you can see here. And of course I forgot to buy a heating pad in time, and now spring is just around the corner and I don’t feel like I’ll use it often enough to buy one now. I think I should make a note in my calendar, maybe for October or so: “get a heating pad and fingerless gloves.”

My travel sketchbooks were of various sizes and formats, not one exactly like any of the others. When I came back I started producing drawings for my exhibition on single sheets of paper so they could be framed, also it was cold and I wasn’t spending much time out and about, so for a while I didn’t have a sketchbook at all. Now I’ve made a new one, and I think I’ve found a format that will be ‘home’ for a while: more or less square, big enough to splash around with some color and layer drawings, but not too big to hold in my hand in the windy outsides…

Sketch of people on public transport

P.S. This drawing is for sale here.

Torsun and Kulla reading from ‘Raven wegen Deutschland’ at the King George in Cologne.

(All photos by Deborah Wargon, except no 2, 8 and 9 by Simon Kowalewski.)

And Rolf was sketching!

P.S. The exhibition goes on until 2 April.

So after a night of no sleep most of the drawings are framed now, and some already hanging. I’m wondering how to hang the rest – all the same size aluminum frames (ca. 25 x 21 cm), but how to arrange? I want to group them according to miniseries – here you can see all the drawings of tradescantia purpurea in color, and some dead tulips in color. Another group is going to be ink drawings, another one simple pencil drawings, a small group (3 x) silver points. The views of Berlin and public transport drawings, including this one, will hang in the back room (smoking area), the main room being completely dedicated to plant drawings.

First I though I may even have too many drawings—now I have a healthy respect for the size of the rooms… Which brings me back to my question. The way I see it I have two main tendencies I can follow: either I try to spread everything out evenly, so no bit of wall looks empty, but with the risk of visual boredom (I’m not much of a fan of very regular arrangements), or I nest them together, risking the ‘obviously blank wall’.

Of course both these tendencies can be done in a regular or a irregular manner: when the drawings are evenly spaced they don’t have to line up, and when they are clustered together they can be arranged in a grid, maybe forming a bigger ‘meta image’ rectangle.

Ah, I wish I could spend a couple of days just rearranging and testing stuff, and not having to hammer the nails in the wall myself;-)

Oh, and don’t worry about my lack of sleep. I’m probably going to go to bed soon, and sleep A LOT before I get up again tomorrow. Framing 30 + drawings and preparing the bigger ones was just too boring to do while fully awake. Perfect for that strange in between of late night and early morning, though. Now that some are already hanging I’m much more relaxed, too.

P.S. Missed the exhibition details? All the info is here.

Some framed public transport drawings

Sigh. There are more than enough drawings already lying around here for my exhibition, but of course I feel compelled to make a couple of extra ambitious pieces at the last minute. As always. And as always, apparently, this implies figuring out some completely new ways of doing stuff. Yeah, good idea on a deadline. Not. But it is fascinating. Also, I’m well aware that nobody besides me will miss the pieces that should have hung there but won’t because nobody else has already seen them in their mind. So I’m gonna be fine. I’m just starting to feel a bit crazy. But then, that’s to be expected.

Now, the things that are different than all or most of the drawings I have made before aren’t completely obvious from these photographs. Also, the one on the left is looking way different by now, and the one on the right is only partially shown. Still, you might pick something up.

I’ve been looking for a way to make my public transport drawings ‘exhibitable’, take them out o sketchbooks somehow, mostly by using folded single sheets of different sizes, like here. This is another attempt, not just putting the people on a single sheet, but trying to convey the feeling of looking through a whole sketchbook, while it still being a flat piece that I can hang on a wall and that could possibly be framed. It is 1,50 m long and about 24 cm high, and I really recommend that you click on it and look at the full resolution file, there is way more to see here than fits in a 620 px width!

I’m happy how this turned out, and I think it will have a good place hanging in a café. I hope somebody will look up sometime and get lost in my big little drawing, and then be surprised how late it already is…

Well, from me that is.

From time to time people contact me to ask how they can buy a drawing, or people that buy one tell me that it took them a while to figure out how to do it. Now, I don’t want to plaster ‘Buy me!’ messages all over my blog, but clearly if it is not obvious how to do so even to people who already made up their mind that they want to own one of my drawings, something is missing. So here comes the comprehensive guide to buying my stuff:

Most of the drawings you see here are for sale. Yes, even the sketchbooks (but they are pricey). If you see something you like you can simply contact me to find out if it is still available, and I am going to answer you with all the details. To get an idea: individual drawings cost between 100€ and 300€ (depending on size, with ~Din A 4 at 150€ and ~Din A 3 at 300€), and sketchbooks start at 900€ (depending on the size and number of pages and the kinds of sketches inside). I take great care to protect my drawings on their way, and in many cases I might be able to send them already matted. Shipping depends on size and destination, but it is free for smaller sized works inside the EU. Payment methods are Paypal or direct bank transfer (Überweisung).

Another, less personal option is to browse my Etsy store. There you will find drawings that I have already prepared for sale, most of them matted, and complete with full information on size, media, and shipping costs. On Etsy you pay via Paypal or credit card. (Here is a guide to the payment process.) (Here a similar guide written in German by a patron after finding out for himself.)

I also take commissions, can send you a drawing already matted and framed, and am willing to accept payment in several rates. However, such things depend on the specific situation, and I cannot give ‘rules of thumb’ for them yet. If you consider taking me up on one of them, please contact me directly. The same goes for studio visits.

Oh, and if you happen to be in or come through Berlin, starting from the 15 February you can of course also come to my exhibition and have a look at my drawings in person.

Example of a Commission

Just this week I finished a commission for a friend of mine who wanted a slightly larger version of one of my travel sketches—here some of the stages that led to the finished drawings (photo only, because it is too big for my scanner…)

Every day there are more roots sprouting, the old ones a bit longer already.