Manifesto

The time has come to move my blog over to Wordpress. With any luck this will mean that I can make it look a little more professional and add more varied pages. Shame, in some strange way I've become quite fond of Blogger.

I'm still in the process of sorting it out, but it's basically up and running.

I won't be updating this anymore, all new posts from this point on will appear on Manifesto.

Walking With Isherwood

 

Christopher Isherwood

There’s a homeless man sleeping under the tracks of Nollendorfplatz Station. He’s spread out across old blankets, his head propped up on a soft pillow, his fully clothed body wrapped in a cover that used to be a pastel shade of pistachio. His eyes are closed, he appears peaceful and comfortable, he is protected from the rain and no-one bothers him. In this quiet enclave of the station, I’m not sure anyone’s even really noticed that he’s there. I noticed because behind him, propping up the railway lines there’s a great big, beautiful old statue. A ghost lurking in the shadows to remind anyone curious enough, that Nollendorfplatz was once a pretty little park full of trams and trains. A gentrified hub linking Schöneburg to the rest of Berlin. 

Nollendorfplatz 1903

I have my breakfast sat on the sill of a disused window in the wall beneath the tracks. A stuffed croissant and a coffee, hastily bought from a stall in the station and this allows me to watch the world go by. Nollendorfplatz has clearly seen better days, yet it’s pleasant and relaxed and for 10 minutes I enjoy being an observer of its world. 

I’m waiting for a man named Brendan. I’m early. I’m in Schöneburg to be a tourist, a very specific kind of tourist who’s searching for a lost Berlin. The Berlin of Cabarets, of Dietrich and Berber, of Otto Dix, George Grosz, of Brecht and Weill. I’m looking for Cosy Corners, landladies,  masochistic eccentrics and aspiring English singers. I’ve come to Schöneburg in search of Christopher Isherwood. 

I’m drinking my coffee, keeping an eye on the clock across from the Goya building. I look away, glance around at my surroundings, watch a man cross the road and a guy stroll down the street clad completely in leather. When I look back there’s a man with white hair stood by the clock, looking around, waiting. This is Brendan, my Isherwood guide. 

I wander over and shake hands. Brendan is instantly likeable, his demeanour echos the calmness of the surroundings. He’s also the best kind of guide you can ever get for something like this, he’s a Brit in love with his adopted city. He explains that there were meant to be three of us, but one doesn’t seem to know what month it is and the other is ill. This means that I have the tour to myself, this has happened on other tours I’ve been on, it’s always been a little weird. But, Schöneburg, with its tree lined streets and endless cafes doesn’t have any feeling of tension and I’m already enjoying the day. 

Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden

Brendan has a file of information and pictures, he starts with a brief history of Isherwood and shows me some photographs of the man himself. Isherwood, with his good friend Wystan Hugh Auden. Christopher was a handsome man in his mid twenties, with slicked back hair and a plain but casually worn suit and tie. Auden seems a little awkward, pushed to the side, clenching his hand to his arm, even his lips seem tense in comparison to the easy smile of Isherwood. Being in Schöneburg makes me realise how easily he would have fit in here, how his informal manner would have so perfectly suited somewhere so laid back.

Nollendorfstraße 17

We head to Nollendorfstraße 17, one of the places where he lived and certainly the place that inspired much of Goodbye to Berlin. Another leafy street, quiet but with a subtle buzz of life, it’s buildings are all pastel shaded with balconies in full summer bloom. Half way down the street is number 17, a building the colour of orange blancmange and it has a plaque that commemorates Isherwood. Brendan points to the second floor, that is where Christopher Isherwood lived, where he became the camera recording an unforgettable part of Berlin’s history.

From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scroll-work and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and secondhand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all of this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.

Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

'top-heavy balconied facades'

As I turn and stare across the street at the ‘balconied facades’, it’s hard to imagine what would happen next. You can still see the tiny details of day to day life, glimpse the things that human beings do which remain constant and unchanging. Bikes, cars, hand written signs outside store fronts, the back of a chair pushed up against a window, a small congregation of friends talking in the street. But history can be heavy handed and these simple things would be taken away from Isherwood’s Berlin. 

Stolperstein

Brendan had shown me a couple of brass squares set into the pavement, these are stumbling blocks - the Stolperstein created by Gunter Demnig. They are spread across different cities in different countries throughout Europe. Each one is handmade and carries a brass plate with a name, birth date and the date and place of death. Auschwitz, Lodz, Theresienstadt, Dachau, a list of places all too familiar. If Isherwood didn’t directly know these fated people, he would probably have passed them in the street. Their names are remembered at 13-14 Nollendorfstraße, Siegfried Perl and Marie Perl, he died in 1943 in Theresienstadt, she died in Auschwitz in 1944. They are a stone’s throw away from where Isherwood lived. 

We leave Nollendorfstraße and make our way up Eisenacher Straße to the fake Eldorado. It sits on the corner of Motzstraße, it looks like a British working man’s club lost its way and found itself in Berlin. It has Berliner Pilsner awnings over continental pavement tables, and proclaims itself a Musikbar. Everything is in place but it just seems so wrong, it doesn’t quite fit and we carry on along Motzstraße. On the opposite corner, at Motzstaße and Kalckreuthstraße is the Speisekammer Im Eldorado, the real site of the Eldorado Cabaret.

Eldorado - 1932

During Isherwood’s time in Berlin, the Eldorado was a cabaret club with an interesting homo/heterosexual clientele. In the ballroom style surroundings, you could buy ‘chips’ for a dance with a transvestite, you could have seen Dietrich or Berber perform, or casually had a chat with Magnus Hirschfeld. It was a liberal place in which almost anything was tolerated and gender definitions became blurred. Today it’s a Bio Supermarket with pastel yellow walls. Once the sign above the door proclaimed that ‘Here is Right’, now the signs tell me about Sesame Bread. Still, it’s a vast improvement on the Swastikas which adorned the building when the SA shut the cabaret down, and turned it into their local headquarters.

We make our way along Kalckreuthstraße, back to Kleiststraße and the site of the Kleist Casino. Brendan informs me this is the site of the oldest gay club in Europe. It’s just another bar in a dirty cream coloured building, it has no windows and today it’s called Bull - a 24 hour, 365 day a year gay fetish bar. It has no charm and, for a place that can make such a claim I kind of wanted something grander. Ballroom splendour maybe, chandeliers and people dressed in tuxedos and ball-gowns elegantly smoking thin cigarettes. There’s a guy standing outside, looks like he’s escaped from a Tom of Finland picture, he goes in and the door closes. 

Goya - 2012

The final stop on the tour is the Goya building. Built in 1905 as the Neues Schauspielhaus, it was built as a theatre and concert hall in the Art Nouveau style. Christopher Isherwood would have been a regular visitor there, taking in many films in the cinema. I have to admit that I got a little excited about the fact that Brecht would have been there at some point too. Naturally it was bombed during the war but the facade and cinema survived, and in 1951 it was renamed the Metropole. By the 1980s it had become a concert venue and now, it’s the Goya which hosts a club night once a week. 

We’re back at Nollendorfplatz, Brendan has been joyous company for over an hour. The tour is well researched by a man who is as enthusiastic about the Weimar as he is Isherwood. No question was left unanswered and his knowledge of the local area, both historic and current is truly amazing. 

With anything like this, there is a past which seems so much more interesting than the present, so much clearer and purposeful. I’m not going to lie, I would like a time machine so that I could go back, I’m so consistently drawn to this time in this place that it feels like it might just be my ‘homeland’. 

The homeless man is still asleep under the tracks, just like he would have been in the 1920s when he found himself the victim of mass unemployment and hyper-inflation. Those tiny details of day to day life, the permanent reality that we shut out with cabarets, nightclubs and bars is always waiting, though: 

You can’t help smiling, in such beautiful weather. The trams are going up and down the Kleiststraße, just as usual. They, and the people on the pavement, and the tea-cosy dome of the Nollendorfplatz station have an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and pleasant in the past - like a very good photograph.

Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

For more information on the Isherwood Walking Tour, visit Cabaret Berlin.

 Nollendorfplatz - 1903                                         Nollendorfplatz - 1910

 

Nollendorfplatz - Max Beckmann - 1911           Nollendorfplatz - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - 1912

 Nollendorfplatz de Nuit - Lesser Ury - 1925     Railway Station Nollendorfplatz at Night - Lesser Ury

Nollendorfplatz Station - 2012

Nollendorfstraße

Nollendorfstraße 17 (Second Floor)                  The Eldorado 2012

                     

Anita Berber by Otto Dix - 1925

Berlin Art Tourism

Female Impersonators In Mirrors -Diane Arbus

I am officially an art tourist. I’m two days in to my latest trip to Berlin, and all I’ve really done is visit art galleries. So far it’s been much more pleasurable than visiting London’s obscenely busy galleries, shuffling around the special exhibitions like cattle making its way into an abattoir. In the Berlin galleries I’ve visited so far, I’ve found it possible to have entire rooms of art work completely to myself, it’s as if I’d died and gone to heaven.

Martin Gropius Bau: Diane Arbus Exhibition

The gallery is a short walk away from Potsdamer Platz, situated right next door to the Topography of Terror. It’s a rather pretty building, designed in the neo-renaissance style with ornate staircases and lots of golden décor. 

I've never been to an exhibition before which is exclusively the work of a photographer, but what I already knew of Arbus’ work had me intrigued, and I was not disappointed. In truth I wasn't expecting it to be as big as it actually was, every time I thought I must be in the last room I was pleasantly surprised to find it carried on. 

The pictures are a wonderful collection of eccentrics and freaks across America, especially New York. Arbus managed to capture the lives of outsiders, tattooed men, a fat lady, nudists and female impersonators with genuine fondness. The faces that stare at you from the shadowy prints are endearing, beautiful and oddly familiar. Some of the most incredible shots are of the work she did with mentally handicapped patients. Most of these shots are untitled, but they appear to be Down’s Syndrome patients, dressed up in Halloween masks or playing in the grounds of the care home. They’re incredibly moving, honest and show how ‘normal’ the day to day life of the ‘handicapped’ can be. There’s a group shot of women dressed up for Halloween, if you look to the right of the picture, one of the ladies has her face painted like a cat. The end of her nose is painted into a black triangle, and thick whiskers are etched across her cheeks. Her smile is priceless, a cheeky ear to ear grin that would cheer anyone's grey day.

Diane Arbus must have instilled a lot of confidence in the people she met. She took pictures of people exposing them at their most vulnerable, there’s something admirable in that. What she’s left us with as a result is a catalogue of a fringe society, the kind we find in books or forgotten art house films. She gave us the first glimpse of the kind of outsiders that would eventually find refuge in Warhol’s factory. I want to know every single one of the people in those pictures, and thanks to Diane Arbus, in some small way I actually feel like I do.

Brücke Museum

If you know me you will have come to learn that my love of Berlin can reach profoundly nerdy levels of irrelevant detail, so it’s a bit of wrench to admit that there’s a side of the city which upsets me. That side is the former West Berlin, it’s okay in places, generally the places where it meets the East, but otherwise it’s a strangely blank and uninspiring place. However, I do like German Expressionist art a great deal so, I braved the banality of West Berlin to visit the Brücke Museum. I took a bus, which is a form of transport I’ve never used before in Berlin, it went well and I got there thanks to the 115 service.

My knowledge of the Brücke Museum was that it contained German Expressionism, and that David Bowie visited it a lot when he lived in Schöneburg. The latter had nothing to do with me visiting it today. Alright, I did kind of want to see some of the paintings that seem to have inspired some of David’s own art work, especially in the 70s, but that genuinely was a sort of side curiosity for me.

The Museum is down a side street in a part of the city which appears to be ridiculously affluent. It was actually like I’d stepped into a time machine and gone back to the 70s. The place is full of those sort of stylized white suburban houses you see in Sci-Fi films, the sort where nothing good happens to any of the characters. I felt a little uncomfortable.

When I got to the Museum I paid, I walked around and it was tiny and full of ‘retired’ people. The art work was interesting but felt like a sampler, like there should be a door that leads you to a huge room that shows you everything. It’s a place of great artwork, but there’s so little on show that you actually feel a bit cheated. Kirchner is worth seeing, the rather large exhibition of artist’s postcards takes up far too much space, and isn’t nearly as interesting as it would like to be. 

I was curious about the people there though, I’ve never been to a gallery anywhere that seems to be visited almost exclusively by the retired generation. Nothing wrong with it, it just seemed odd that it should be that way. 

I wasn’t there that long, in fact I probably travelled longer to get there. I wanted to leave West Berlin, with its long, wide, non-descript, tree lined streets and return to the East, to the part of the city that’s poorer, dirtier and more alive.

Berlinische Galerie

Berlinische Staircase

I got back to Köchstraße, the station for Checkpoint Charlie, from there I made my way to the Berlinische Galerie. The gallery is just around the corner from the Jewish Museum, I memorised the route last time I was here and could possibly get there in my sleep. I got stopped for directions, which I gave and felt oddly quite helpful.

'No Positions Available'

The Berlinische is a decent size gallery, it has a permanent exhibition of modern Berlin art (1880 – 1980), and changing (contemporary) exhibitions. One of these current exhibits carries the theme of Montage art, really interesting, especially if you’re a fan of Dada. But I was really there to see the permanent exhibition.

Dada Montage

Hanah Höch

I love this gallery so much, it’s full of the kind of art work that I find inspiring and breathtaking. The interwar years, with its avant-garde, the Dadaists and Expressionists is an absolute dream. Otto Dix, Hanah Höch, Beckmann, Lieberman, Puni, if I could collect art it would be this wonderful display of utter originality. I was there for around four hours, and I walked around the earlier stuff twice because it’s so damn good.

Art is personal, I’m not a fan of the abstract, I can love or leave cubism and surrealism occasionally bores. I don’t expect people to be as excited as I was by the Berlinische collection, but it’s really worth seeing. It reflects Berlin life, I could see Brecht in some of these paintings, war, poverty, revolution, fear and defiance. It shows the spirit of this city and if you’re in anyway intrigued by that, this collection will inspire. 

David

David Live (2012)
David Bowie from the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.
Pencil on Heavy Weight paper
2H, B, 2B, 4B & 6B
Paper Stump

I finally finished drawing this earlier today. It was originally meant to be in colour so I actually used the wrong paper, but I don't think it turned out too bad. (The paper is also too big to scan the picture properly, so the quality of this reproduction isn't as good as it could be.)

Aside from the fact that I'm a massive David Bowie fan, I do really like drawing him, there's a symmetry to his face which is pleasing to recreate. By that, I don't simply mean he's beautiful, he has a fantastic bone structure which is wonderful to draw. 

I've been drawing him since I became a fan 23 years ago, unfortunately I don't have a lot of what I drew years ago, (which included a massive drawing I did on one of the huge pieces of paper that separate layers of sugar in supermarkets!) At some point I'd like to do something which has a little more artistic licence to it, preferably in oils, but space is an issue so I'm a bit restricted with what I can actually do.

Anyway, here's some of the pictures I've done of David over the last few years.

Scary Monsters (2009)

Taken from the Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) photo shoot

Digital Drawing and Colouring 

This was originally a design I did for a mug, so I was trying to keep it very basic so that I could paint it onto a blank white ceramic surface. It worked too, I ended up with a colour and black and white version on the mug. Alas, the mug has faded but the digital design is still perfectly fine. 

I do want to re-visit this image though and do it in detail, it's such a great shot it deserves a little more time to be spent on it.

Super Creep (2010)

Taken from a photo shoot around 1995 (Outside era)

Pencil on Canson Bristol Board
5B, 4B, 2B, B, HB & 2H
Paper Stump

I drew this because I was trying to get used to drawing on Bristol Board, I really just wanted to practice shading techniques on the paper. It's not as detailed as I would have liked but it was a good exercise.

The Man Who Fell To Earth (2011)

Watercolour (on postcard)

Another experiment, I bought a brand new watercolour set so decided to copy the poster of the British release of The Man Who Fell To Earth. It's a straight copy, done purely to see whether or not I could handle the paints. Weirdly though, it's probably my favourite of all the Bowie images I've done. 

David Bowie (2012)

Image from The Man Who Fell To Earth

Watercolour (on postcard)

I painted this earlier this year, I really don't think it's that great but, it's notable because I had Bell's Palsy when I did it. I painted it wearing sunglasses because it's the only way I could really see to do anything. It also helped to relieve the extreme boredom of being ill with something so utterly annoying. 

Space

I came across this interesting page of pictures showing writer's in their workspaces, it seemed like a good prompt to photograph my desk and show the world the precise location of my torture. 

I don't think that it's entirely important where you write, what I think matters is feeling like it's a sanctuary, a place where you can step away momentarily from the world and create. However, I like being surrounded by books, they can obviously be a great source of inspiration, I also like random things like my Muppet finger puppets and toy Trabant. Pictures are also useful, I like black and white photographs and art postcards, they're something to get lost in while you're thinking. 

The books immediately above the desk are two deep, I ran out of space a long time ago and the phone, it really is a rotary dialler. 

Do you Converse in the Dialect Derived of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue?

Do you Converse in the Dialect Derived of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue?

or the ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ of Basic Communication

Have you ever found yourself on the phone to one of the multitude of call centres trying to find out a little information, or rectify a problem? I’m sure you have, and I’m sure that you’ve wondered why you’re unable to get a straightforward answer from an advisor. This probably isn’t too bad if your enquiry is quite basic, but hit them with something a little more complicated and you’ll most likely find yourself in a world of non-committal answers. Before you blame the ‘ineptitude’ of the advisor, spare a thought for the environment they’re working in, and the business requirements they have to meet. 

They are representatives of a company, as such they are required to meet the business requirements of that company - those requirements mean that the advisors have to speak to customers in a certain way. There is of course a degree of common sense to this, any company would naturally wish to be seen as friendly, professional, cooperative and courteous. Some companies do this by addressing customers formerly, some choose to adopt an informal manner and request to use your first name. It includes ensuring that you apologise, that you say please and thank you, that you listen to a customer and demonstrate that you understand their enquiry. All perfectly reasonable, and the kind of communication you would expect of professional and civilised people. On the flip side, this also means scrutinising the language advisors use to converse with customers, this includes defining words or phrases as inappropriate or negative. It’s a wonderful idea if those words are restricted to the obscene or directly offensive, I think we can all pretty much agree that swear words and racism aren’t going to improve a situation, but saying ‘hi’ instead of ‘hello’! The problem with ‘hi’ is the informality of the abbreviation of the word, it’s considered to be slang. Also a word like ‘unfortunately’ would demonstrate negativity, even when used in a positive context, e.g: 

Unfortunately your delivery didn’t arrive because of the adverse weather conditions, however, as a gesture of goodwill we have rescheduled your delivery and included a diamond encrusted gold Rolex to compensate for the inconvenience. 

Bit of an extreme example, but you catch my drift. The problem with this isn’t the customers or the advisors, the problem is the business that requires the misappropriation of language in order to satisfy some bogus objective. An objective which is important simply because the company have decided it’s important. Don’t, whatever you do use the word ‘don’t’ in their vicinity, especially if you’re committing the cardinal sin of admitting that you ‘don’t know’ something and you have absolutely no way of finding out. Why? Well because, quite frankly it’s above your pay grade, and the company have deemed you too unimportant to have access to the information you need in order to deliver a positive and appropriate response to the customer. God forbid that you should be insufficiently qualified to cure Mrs Smith’s dog’s cancer, and advise the distraught lady that you ‘can’t’ do it instead of being ‘unable’ to do it. Even then, even if you get it right and tell her you’re ‘unable’ to do this, then for heavens sake, make sure that you advise her what you are able to do for her. 

All attempts at humorous sarcasm aside, the tragedy of this is that I’m serious about this bastardisation of language, you really can’t use these words in some of our call centres. Personally I think it’s utterly absurd and should be treated with the absolute contempt it deserves, however, I believe that this genuinely affects the quality of the service we receive as customers, it also negatively affects the advisors. 

When you make a call to one of these places you will be advised that the ‘call may be monitored for training purposes’. What this means is assessment of the advisor you speak to, in order to maintain a level of service it is reasonable for a company to monitor the quality of its output. Fine, but these assessments also include whether or not the aforementioned ‘negative’ words are used and this can have a detrimental effect on the advisor. If it causes them to consistently fail the assessment they can be penalised, in the short term this can mean forfeiting a bonus, we’re not talking banker bonus’ here, but we are talking about a little extra cash for a workforce that will generally be earning considerably less than the national average - it makes a difference. If this behaviour persists it means that their suitability for the role can come into question, this can mean sanctions, by sanctions I mean warnings and by this I ultimately mean dismissal. 

What about how it affects us as customers using this service? Well it means that you’re dealing with people who lack the confidence to do their job properly, just in case what they ultimately end up doing is communicating with you in the wrong way. They can’t commit to an answer about an advert you’ve seen saying one thing when what the company have decided is that it means something else. Beware of the word interpretation whenever it is used by a large organisation, interpretation in this context will generally mean what they intended it to say and not what it actually said. The advisors in this situation are afraid of saying the wrong thing, not the logical idea of the ‘wrong thing’ but the company designated definition of the ‘wrong thing’. It undermines their confidence in how they fulfil their role, leaving them frustrated and the customers no closer to a resolution.

There seems to be an increase in this desire to redefine our basic communication, especially by businesses and politicians. Orwell famously referred to it as ‘Doublespeak’, a  lovely noun with it’s own wonderfully informative entry in the dictionary:   

noun

[mass noun]

deliberately euphemistic, ambiguous, or obscure language:

the art of political doublespeak

What concerns me about this increasing ambiguity is what it can lead to, aside from a society which speaks one thing and means another, it has a rather worrying historical precedent. 

Propagandists use language and slogans to disguise their true meaning. When the Nazi’s used the term ‘The Jewish Question’ it could be interpreted any number of ways - what it resulted in was a ‘Final Solution’, and this solution was genocide. These two fairly innocuous phrases referred to the extermination of 6 million people, it meant degradation, starvation, torture and death. Robert Jackson in his closing address at the Nuremberg Trials put it a little more eloquently:

Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "final solution" of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination "special treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "protective custody" meant concentration camp; "duty labor" meant slave labor; and an order to "take a firm attitude" or "take positive measures" meant to act with unrestrained savagery. Before we accept their word at what seems to be its face, we must always look for hidden meanings.

In doing this the Nazis eroded people’s perception of what was happening, the phraseology was so benign that it couldn’t possibly mean anything as sinister as genocide. You become desensitised to this corruption of language, especially when its corruption is gradual. At first your Jewish neighbours are being relocated, three years later they’re being reduced to anonymous constituents of a pile of hair and shoes, all in the quest to resolve the ‘Jewish Question’.

Even now we use phrases like ‘extraordinary rendition’, which can mean kidnap, imprisonment and torture. ‘Collateral damage’ is the acceptable spin on the inadvertent death of numerous innocent civilians in a war zone, like the entire population of a village accidentally stepped out in front of a guided missile. 

To make it a little more everyday, how about ‘job flexibility’, which sounds like a nice thing to have, but what it really means is a lack of job security. ‘Outsourcing labour’ means dismissing existing staff and bringing in a cheaper workforce, with even less job security than those of you with job flexibility. And finally ‘downsize’, which makes everything sound like it’s going to be made all neat and trim, but what will actually happen is a very large part of a company will become unemployed.

Whilst I would never dare to consider the idiocy of call centre processes to be the same thing as the events leading to Nazi genocide, I think it’s worth baring in mind exactly what the corruption of language is capable of doing. It is detrimental to our society to evolve such a convoluted way of communicating, and history shows that the people who adopt this approach are very rarely ever people you should trust. As Orwell wrote in Politics and the Political Language:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting ink.

So ask yourself a question, do you converse in the dialect derived of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, or do you simply speak English?

1933

1933

The reference picture for this was a photograph that I found in an Art Catalogue. I ripped the picture out and didn't think to keep any information regarding the image, so I've no idea who the original picture is of or by.

The picture is done on an A6 watercolour postcard, it was an attempt to paint in watercolour after a very long break from using that medium. It's also a good way to experiment using only one colour to create depth.