Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Heinrich Platz

In the corner from the Oranien Street and Mariannen Street in Kreuzberg is the Cafe Bateau Ivre. In sunny days you can sit ourside and watch the Heinrich square.
We met last time to sketch there. The sun got through the building transforming a quite uninteresting view into something wonderful.
Heinrichplatz

Friday, December 9, 2011

RBB Interview

Our Berlin Sketchers Group was interviewed by the local TV RBB. Check berlin.urbansketchers.org to see all the drawings my sketchers friends did on on that occasion.

Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden.
Tv interview
The film crew by the interview.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Delicatessen

Kreuzberg is the place where the Turk migrants settle down when they arrived in Berlin. There is a lot of the Turk Culture there, for example this Turk Bakery in the Oranien Strasse.
Melek Pastanesi
The Bakery is 24 hours open and is full of Turk sweets and Bread
The neighborhood is changing a lot. It is a fancy place to live now. The prices of the apartments and store is getting higher. Traditional stores are being replace by fancy design shops. I feel attracted to draw this places because I want to preserve them, they are the ones that gives this places its character and beauty.

In the Cover of a Magazine

..was not that part of a Madonna song? Well I felt really good when I got to open the envelope with the last number of "Jüdisches Berlin".

Juedisches Berlin
A few months ago I did some drawings from the Jüdische Kulturtage in Berlin (you can see them here). The organization liked the drawings and wanted to included in their magazine, but that didn't work since the magazine is black and white and the drawings were full of color. Instead they decided to commission me to draw a meeting of the board of the Jewish Community. The committee should be elected, and the drawing would be better to pass the contents of the next issue.

It was a hard task. The first problem I confront was the point of view. I had to exaggerate the perspective in order to fit the A4 format. The second decision was to choose the media, pen or watercolor. Pen has the disadvantage that it could be related to a cartoon. People don't feel comfortable to be portrait as a cartoon, so I choose watercolor being careful to to avoid a resemblance and concentrate more in an attitude or posture.

There were some many characters on the table. I took me a long time to finish it. But I am happy with the result.