Europe Sketchbook: Berlin

Finally we arrived in Berlin. Berlin has a reputation for being an arty city, so as artists we were excited to head down there and check it out.

One of the first things that surprised me was the sheer size of the city - and that's coming from Melbourne, which is a big city! There was something just big about their wide boulevards that stretch on and on, palaces galore, and multiple city squares.

We stayed there for 4 days and loved it. Here are some sketches and drawings from there. I was really inspired by the Northern European tradition of graphics arts and dense mark-making, and you can see it coming out more and more in these drawings.

Wanted to do more collage, layering all these bits and pieces everywhere. Museum Island is a UNESCO world heritage site in the middle of Berlin, with at least 4 massive museums, covering many periods.

I really loved the streets and buildings of Berlin. They had a unique character and feel, sort of square and colourful.

Behind Alexanderplaatz. 

Still trying to capture those colourful squares! This time, with collage.

And I kept drawing with my trusty pens in my moleskine sketchbook. Here are the ones I made in Berlin.

A drawing of one of the buildings on Museum Island.

Charlottenburg Palace. Waiting under an arch for the place to open, while it started raining.

Hautbahnhoff. The main train station, a massive modern steel structure. My last drawing in Berlin, you can see the clock points to 11AM.