Laurelines

Blue crabs, sketches

The first blue crabs of the season at Tom Robinson's... they're great excuses to play with ink and watercolor!

Berlin Zoo sketches/new art supplies

I'm not a fan of non-habitat zoos, but the Berlin Zoo is one of the best of its kind I've been to. On the day my daughter and I visited it, we were charmed by the monkeys and the hippos. Here, I think you'll see why:

I used to run in every city I traveled to. Now I go to art supply stores. Ah well. For everything there's a season.

Here's my stash from a couple of such stores in Berlin. I had a yen (no pun intended) for the yellow-topped brush pen that looks like a Pentel color brush pen after reading about it on Rolf Schroeter's blog. The pen is from Yamashina, a Japanese bookstore there. The other goodies are from Philographos. I was so excited to find J. Herbin brush pens that are filled with brown or black ink cartridges. The nibs looked (and are) supple and fine. The ink, I discovered later, is water-soluble, so that's not great for my purposes. I guess it's back to filling Kuretake water brush pens with acrylic ink for me. I'd seen Hahnemülhe sketchbooks mentioned online. In my eternal sketch for the perfect sketchbook, I grabbed one.. we shall see how near to perfection it approaches!

Last, a view to the east, sketched from the rooftop terrace of the Reichstag:

Berlin in March, sketches

March in Berlin is quite different from autumn in Berlin, of course. Colder, more raw. Indoor sketches predominate. This was a super trip... I was there to see my daughter, but she and I also had great fun meeting up with Rolf Schroeter and Olga Prudnikova, fellow Urban Sketchers correspondents, for dinner, some wine, and, well, sketching! (Click on their names for links to their own sketches from that evening--it's always such fun to see how different artists respond to the same setting.)

I have more sketches from Berlin to post---and, I hope, a little report on some art supplies I bought there... coming soon!