Wiesbaden in monochrom

To sketch outside my comfort zone is something i like. So when i forgot my watercolour box  last Saturday to meet with Urban Sketchers Rheinmain, it turned out to be a blessing. Sketching in  ballpoint pen is something i used to do a lot more, and i enjoy these simple sketches.

Trinkhalle Fein

Darmstadt

Like every month, we met up with Urban Sketchers Rheinmain. In February, we gathered at Landesmuseum to draw exhibits. After the museum closed, we sketched a typical Darmstadt backyard wit 1950s architecture. Then we continued on to the Krone, a badly lit pub and finished our sketching day with some astonishisngly cheap beer..

St. Stephan

On a rather warm Sunday in February, i rode my bike to a suburb of Mainz, Gonsenheim and stopped to sketch glimpses of the church towers. Usually one can barely see the church at all, because all the building have been constructed very close by. But that time, a garage had been demolished, thus offering new views.

München

Heidelberg

A day trip to Heidelberg to meet some local sketchers. We explored the Karzer, a prison for misbehaving university students, which existed till the beginning of the 19th century. During its last days, students actually wanted to be imprisoned there- mostly to paint their names, portraits and stories on the walls. Favorite quote: 

Weil wir als ehrliche Leute 5 auf der Strasse gefundene Bausteine auf der Polyzei ablieferten, indem wir sie mit der Bezeichnung Fundobjekt in die Wachstube warfen, sitzen wir hier als Märtyrer unserer Ehrlichkeit!
As honest people who´d found 5 bricks on the street, what else could we do but deliver them as found property to the police by throwing them in the guard room?  So we sit here as martyrs of our honesty!

We continued the day with  frozen fingers on the old bridge, then thawing them in the old university lecture hall. Finished it all off with some mulled wine on the christmas market.

Hedderich

Drawing at the scrapyard "Hedderich" in Alsbach Hähnlein.

Senckenbergmuseum

 The museum Senckenberg in Frankfurt am Main is one of the largest museum of natural history in Germany. Its popular with visitors, mainly because of its dinosaur fossil collection. It has been in existence for such a long time that it has become an attraction of its own: not for being sciency, but for displaying weird exhibits. Apart from good old T-Rex, you can find a a very dusty, stuffed anaconda eating a pig. There´s the usual stuffed animals, but also the scull of a conjoined twin calf. There are also exhibition cabinets from the 19th century displaying specimens in jars, immersed in formalin- a rather gruesome attraction, but very interesting.

Frankfurt

Matera

Matera is a city in southern Italy, in the province Basilicata. It is known as the subterranean city because of its structure of ancient cave dwellings which were inhabited since 7000 BC- and some of them were left only in the 1950s. The so-called  "Sassi" make up the old city center and are famous as film sets.