Berlin Looking South - Lines, Lines, Lines...

Over the period of almost 2 weeks I was working my way westwards (or in drawing terms from the left to the right) on the fine liner drawing.

Luckily I found a good and friendly professional scanning service in Islington that can scan the more than 2m long image in one piece so finally I don’t have to stitch several A2 sheets together, take them apart again at the end and scan the image in 10 or more steps. Thank god for that, hurray!

Drawing on a big, single sheet makes my life easier but still, a bit of patience ;-) , a good range of fine liner pens, lots of blotting paper and good music will be needed for the next week or so.

It’s growing...

As much as I love drawing I must admit that it is a nice feeling to know when I draw a line, a dot or a window now, it is the last time. Everything is where I want it to be. At this point all the decisions and thinking work have been done and I can solely focus on the craftsmanship of precise and meticulous drawing. This part of the work reminds me very much of my time at uni when we, as students of architecture, did our technical project drawings by hand.

The fundamental difference, however, is the fact that now I never ever use a ruler. Long, straight lines, curves, circles, ellipses, all need those little, perfect imperfections, characteristic for hand drawn work and which make the difference between a technical and an artistic drawing.

Even though I could always retouch a real mistake or accident (I hate smudging and love blotting paper) digitally, I want my original hand drawing as perfect as possible hence why the work now takes time and great care.