Urban Sketching

by James Glazebrook

I went back to Soma at Hamburger Bahnhof this weekend. I know… I was less than impressed with it on my first visit, but this time was different – I went along with Rolf and Oona of the Urban Sketchers network. While the name of this loose affiliation of artists is fairly self-explanatory, you can read more about it – and Rolf’s involvement – over on Slow Travel Berlin. Although my companions were underwhelmed by the installation itself, they turned out some impressive work – you can see Rolf’s sketches from the day here, and Oona’s here. Personally, I enjoyed the experience – in the relative quiet of a random Saturday morning (after the Christmas crush), the reindeer seemed peaceful, the canaries unobtrusive (it took me about half an hour to remember their chirping wasn’t just a recording), and the piss-smell not quite as rank. I found myself really looking, noticing small things like the ear buds worn by the deer’s keeper, for whom this was just another day at work. My passion for sketching reignited, I picked up pen and pad again when I visited Chipps for the umpteenth time later that day. Anyway, here are some drawings what I made.

Urban sketching 1

Urban sketching 2

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