Urban Sketcher

Just before catching my train back to Berlin, I had a hot chocolate in Cafe Riquet, I mainly went in because it’s a gorgeous art nouveau building and interior, and I wanted to sketch it.

The breakfast room at my pension in Leipzig.

The Leipzig neighbourhood where my hotel was.

The old centre of Leipzig. The Nikolai Church where in late 1989 meetings of concerned citizens were held who were forming a resistance to the DDR regime, is here. Only a few months later, the Wall came down.

Leipzig rooftops near the City Hall.

Shop window with Meissen porcelain. Gold is the sign of the times, right? Meissen porcelain is famous. This set costs a lot of money. I have to say, porcelain, crystal, silver, curtains, linens — all those emblems of domesticity are completely uninteresting to me. Sure, I like it when they’re well designed. But do I want to waste my time to wash them, iron them, polish them, store them, and worry about breaking them? Not.

Leipzig building facades.

Leipzig, Mädlerpassage, a nicely preserved fin-de-siècle covered shopping area. Goethe also traipsed around here as a young law student, and built a bar that he frequented here, into his “Faust”.

I like this decorative flower box — a good solution for winter, until you can fill it with live plants again.

Augustusplatz, Leipzig. This used to be Karl-Marx-Platz during DDR times, and I was “admiring” the socialist architecture.

Berlin, and clearly Leipzig and other former East German cities, are famous for their “Ampelmann”, the little man in the traffic light who wears a jaunty hat and looks like he’s straight from the 50s. And indeed, I think he was introduced in the early 60s, and this popular graphic has survived the DDR.

Apparently there is even an “Ampelfrau” but she was only used in a few places.

Riquet Chocolate Cafe, Leipzig. A chocolate cafe? With 3-D elephant heads? And art nouveau? How could I not go in and draw the place. But I was rushed, I only had 30 minutes for my hot chocolate and sketch before I had to catch my train.

Riquet Chocolate Cafe, Leipzig, interior. I normally have a great aversion to anything wicker, but in a place with elephant head decor it seems acceptable.

Back in Berlin, the new Hauptbahnhof there is pretty impressive as well. Unlike the Leipzig train station where all tracks are spread out on one level, the Berlin one has three levels where trains are arriving and departing constantly.

I arrive back in Berlin and find it has snowed while I was in Leipzig. This area of restaurants with large outdoor dining areas at Hackescher Markt looks like it could be a fun place to have a drink in the warmer seasons. Not now.

I made this drawing in Procreate on the iPad of a Daniel Richter painting (Untitled, 2002) at the Leipzig MdbK (Leipzig Fine Art Museum). As I draw more of these copies, I feel my reverence for art dwindle from deity-like admiration to a more human appreciation. I have had a tendency to overly admire artists, and I still do, but at the same time, I remember now that they are people too, full of doubt, trying things out, and sometimes they are brilliant, sometimes full of bullshit.

Another iPad painting in Procreate: three portraits from the painting “Tafelrunde der norwegischen Künstler in Berlin” by Christian Krohg, around 1876. I added my own graphic elements to this one. I painted these portraits quite quickly, in about 8 minutes each. Click on the image to see it bigger.

The Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts at night.

The Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts during the day. What does it say about a city that has the audacity to put a 10-story translucent box filled with art in its centre? It says “we care about art and culture.” I was impressed.

The Cafe at the Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste.

Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste interior.

Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste interior.

Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste interior. Art installation by Peter Wegner is visible.

Staircase at the Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste.

Leipzig courtyard.

Another one of those dollhouses I keep seeing in shop windows in the former East Germany areas.

A Leipzig Absinthe bar. Absinthe must be the perfect hipster drink; retro, ironic, image-oriented, potentially dead-serious, but not really.

Leipzig building entrance.

The 1884 Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei / cotton mill has been converted to artist studios and galleries starting in the late 1990s with the official opening of several famous galleries in 2005 catapulting this “art factory” into the art establishment.

Leipzig-Plagwitz train station signage. I like the old-fashioned type face.

January 12 was a beautiful sunny day. It bears mentioning, because there have been so few sunny days in Berlin. I wanted to make sure to get to the cotton mill by 11 a.m. when the tour opened so I wouldn’t miss a minute. 11 a.m. does not sound that hard to make, but when you’re me, that can be an early time. I walked by some pictoresquely decrepit buildings on my way through Leipzig-Plagnitz.

You can purchase a run-down building here. I have no idea for how much, but the real question is, how much is it going to cost you to fix it up?

Already-reno’d next to yet-to-be-reno’d buildings in Leipzig-Plagwitz. At least you get a nice before-after comparision.

Still on my morning walk to my destination.

The text above the door frame says something about a metal workers’ union place.

A dentist office window on my walk. I keep seeing miniatures or doll houses in shop windows. That may have been a popular thing in the former East Germany.

Leipzig-Plagwitz street scene. I liked how non-commercial it looked here. And there were quite a few young people around on bikes. Student dive area for sure. I just have to be clear: I very much liked Leipzig, because it looked so non-commercial in many areas.

I am not sure what the point of these barrels was, except maybe to make a point about the hazards of radioactive waste storage.

A poster for a Mayor-General election of Leipzig in 2013. I like the random rippings.

Germans like curry, whether it’s on their sausages or on actual Indian food.

My first glimpse of the outer buildings on one end of the Leipzig cotton mill artist studios. I was thrilled to be here.

It gradually filled up with people in the courtyards and pathways of the cotton mill. Some outside food booths were set up with hot Russian cabbage stew (“soljanka”), sausages, hot tea, and glühwein.

At the visitor centre in the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei, there is a one-room exhibit of paraphernalia of the former industry, cotton textile production, which took place here.

Old spindles at the Leipzig cotton mill.

Windows of artist studios at the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

Art Nouveau style factory door at the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

Wayfinding typography at the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

A building at the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

I met an interesting artist couple who have their studio at the Spinnerei, Torsten and Isolde Russ at their exhibit and we chatted for a long time. I liked both of their work and bought one of Torsten’s books about his one-line drawings, and Isolde showed me a fantastic sketchbook she had created with cutouts, which reminded me of what I had just done for the Sketchbook Project.

Isolde Russ, artist. I enjoyed meeting this artist couple.

Torsten Russ, artist

Sunset at the cotton mill studios.

More of the sunset.

In one of the stairways in one of the many artist buildings inside the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

In one of the hallways in an artist building inside the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei.

While the spaces look a bit rough, but just right for mucking with paint and art supplies, the plumbing and bathroom facilities have all been recently modernized. They have toilets that you just wave at to flush them. I guess a big wave means you went big.

Some random spray paint remnants from some artist on the wall here.

A large empty space which could possibly be used for exhibitions, surrounded by studios in just one of the many artist buildings. Such luxury of space.

Windows in one of the smaller studios that are set aside for promising young artists.

I was drawn to the artist studio windows, wondering what happens behind all of them, and enjoying their glow.

I met this graphic artist, Katja Zwirnmann, in her studio and shop at the Leipzig cotton mill, and had a chat about graphic design with her. She was a genuinely nice person and I liked her work very much, which consists of offset, screen-printed or handprinted illustrations and designs. She also binds books with hand-printed covers.

I said good-bye to the Leipzig cotton mill studios around 6 pm because I was getting cold and congested and decided to look for a warm place to have a warm meal in downtown Leipzig. I had a wonderful 7 hours here at the cotton mill.

After my full day of art viewing at the cotton mill studios, I took the bus to downtown Leipzig to look for some evening entertainment and a meal. During my quest, I walked by this cool lamp in an office building lobby.

In the evening, I went to a comedy cabaret “Der gemeine Sachse”, a satire about Saxons. I ended up at a table with a family group of 8 Saxons and felt like a bit of an intruder, but they were nice enough. The cabaret was not as funny as I’d hoped, or maybe I don’t get the Saxons’ humour, or maybe I no longer get German humour. But really, it just wasn’t that funny. There were too many canned, tired, old jokes (as in “three Saxons go to heaven…”), and too little bite for my taste. But the dinner theatre venue was nice, and I was able to get food and drink there, and overall it was preferable to spending the evening in my drab hotel room.

There was a satiric painting of Angela Merkel at the Cabarett Leipzig which I thought was great. They must have modelled her busty look after an infamous photo of her in a very low-cut evening gown.

I sketched the main train station in Leipzig.

The Leipzig Hauptbahnhof / main train station: I was shocked when I arrived here at the sheer size of this train station. I learned later that this is the largest train station in all of Europe. Since I had time to kill before I could check in at my hotel, I put my backpack in a locker and spent almost two hours just walking around, photographing and sketching the train station. It was awe-inspiring. On top of everything, there is also a two-level mall below the train station level.

Just one of several what I call “side halls” of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.

The Leipzig main train station consists of not just one, but many of these domed ceilings.

Looking back down one of several giant domed halls towards the main hall of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.

Looking out of the Leipzig main train station.

Old trains are displayed along one of the many tracks (I think there are well over 20 tracks) of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.

Old trains are displayed along one of the many tracks of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.

The streets around the neighbourhood of Leipzig where my hotel was, still looked very “DDR” (East Germany-like).

I arrived at my hotel in Leipzig. The street was dimly lit and not as many houses were fixed up from East German times as I am used to from Berlin.

An abandoned factory building in Leipzig. The area where I stayed, is an old industrial neighbourhood with small factories, warehouses, as well as residential buildings. I walked by some gloomy sights on my way to a restaurant. I had found what looked like a good place online called “Prellbock” (this means “buffer” in the railroad sense to help stop a train at the end of its track). And Prellbock was indeed a great restaurant; serving large delicious meals of game meat, rabbit, but also schnitzel for dinner for €9 to €14.

My Leipzig hotel room — it was a bit drab, but adequate. I did not expect more for €29 a night. My cold was at its peak and I was happy to have a warm, quiet room and a bed to sink into.