Laurelines

December trip sketches and thoughts

(Please click on images to see them in full.)

 

The days after our return from Bavaria and Austria raced by. I felt breathless trying to get everything ready for the holidays. But part of me is still there, in lively and friendly Munich, elegant Salzburg, and imposing, glittery Vienna. The sketches I made this time were idiosyncratic and totally self-directed. It was cold out and we were traveling with friends, so I didn't have, or didn't arrange for, many urban-type sketching opportunities.

I took a limited mix of art tools: big Pitt artist pens, a smattering of Inktense pencils, a couple of micro pens and a Pentel pocket brush pen. I wanted to add color on site, get it done! I  often take gray or brown toned paper sketchbooks when I travel to cold climates in the winter time and I did this again this time. The toned paper gives an atmospheric quality to what I draw that is just right for those cold places.

My first sketch of the trip was in Munich, at a little café in the Viktualienmarkt.  We were on a glühwein quest and we found a fun, spartan place to sit and celebrate the first night of our trip.

Another successful glühwein stop! This was the second night of our Munich adventure.

The wild boar mounted on the wall at Goerreshof restaurant in Munich took me back instantly to memories of our first trip to Sweden, to Gothenburg to see our daughter Cecelia, where I sketched another pig's head in the food market there:

Here's my Swedish pig from 2005:

And here's my Munich pig from 2016:

 

In tiny Frielassing, where we had to drop off our rental car, we had dinner at a family-run, cozy restaurant. I made this sketch in the darkish interior, using dry Inktense pencils. 

 

At the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna, I was compelled to sit and draw skeletons from the long- ago past. 

 

Leaving Vienna for Munich again and our flight home, I drew this lovely woman at the Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning.

 

 I admit that I have had mixed feelings about starting to write this post. My cheerful words and images seemed inappropriate at best. A few days after we returned home, 12 people were murdered in Berlin and 56 were injured at a Christmas market very like the ones we went to in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. I had, in fact, at first hesitated to return to Munich this year, after last year's terrorist events in Munich and other parts of Germany ...and elsewhere. In the end, I decided not to let fear guide our plans and so we went. We were lucky this time. Others, tragically, were not.

That we live in highly dangerous times is obvious to everyone. Hatred and violence manifest daily around the world. It is easy to feel hopeless and I often do. It is not a state of mind I can sustain and yet what is there to replace it with?

For my own comfort and with that stubborn human hope that, against all evidence and against all odds, there's a better world coming, I repeat to myself these words from the Buddhist Metta prayer, the prayer for lovingkindness:

May all beings everywhere be happy, be safe, and be free from suffering.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

 

Love and peace to you.

 

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!

Berlin, all sketches in one go

Sorry to fling so much at you, but I'm ready to move on from these recent trip sketches!

I know there is a way to join together in Photoshop the following elements of this Hauptbanhof sketch, made in a Maruman accordion sketchbook, but I don't know how... right at the moment. I must learn!

Here's a digital image of the whole thing:

The implicit good news is that the Maruman folding sketchbook IS still available online (at Jerry's Artarama and other places)--yay!!! These have red covers, unlike the aqua ones I used to use, but the paper is the same! So, I can carry on with my favorite little travel sketchbooks.. whew.

My daughter and I met extremely nice and uber-talented sketcher (one of my very favorites) Rolf Schroeter in Berlin. He has very generously given her lots of good advice about living in Berlin, for which Cecelia and I are both so grateful. It helps me to know that she has such a connection already. I drew Rolf while he and Cecelia were talking and here he is:

Now, more Berlin!

So there, a few sketches from a very short trip. There are more, but these will do for sharing---they're pretty typical Laurelines subjects, except maybe for the Hauptbanhof one, which is of a type I've begun to do since I became a correspondent for Urban Sketchers a couple of years ago. It's nice to spread your wings.