Germany (Berlin)

Rolf Schröter

Rolf lives in Berlin and is sketching from observation as a passion since his youth, while currently drawing for stone-design, architecture and bits of illustration for the living. After an apprenticeship as stonemason he achieved an architecture degree at the RWTH Aachen. While studying there he was teaching observational drawing as a student assistant at the architecture department. He joined USk in 2009 and co-founded the berlin.USk-blog in 2011. Since this time sketching more and more became the grout, that fills most gaps in his everyday live. He teaches local and international workshops on on-location-drawing and gives arts courses at a school for social pedagogy.

We want to create a visual report of our experience on a place in a time.
We will practice skills, to compose a drawing out of spontaneous captures and go for it as a joyful adventure.

Workshop 1 (in English): September 21, 09:30-12:00
Workshop 2 (in German): September 21, 14:00-16:30
Location: Dorfplatz Zuoz

Description:
Drawing is our method to experience places. If we go somewhere, our habit to draw makes us stay and observe, we recognize a places live through a period of time and with open senses. We want to try to record this experience of live and atmosphere in our drawings while it is happening. To do so, we need an attempt that deals wit the unexpectable, that does not aim for a pre planned composition, keeps our drawing open, but still captures a places specific features. To do so, I suggest to start a drawing right away with a «piece of live» that spontaneously comes to our attention, combine it with context - more people, vehicles, «furniture» architecture, animals, landscape , just like it comes to our focus and is needed for our stories.

We will practice some skills:

• quick and spontaneous captures of moving items (people, vehicles, animals)
• experiment with degrees of abstraction - what does it need, to make our ink on paper a living thing
• pitch up a stage
• how do we combine our spontaneous captures so they convey a good of space to be filled up with our story

Participants should work in their own sketchbooks, with their «usual materials», as long as they are quick at hand, eg. pencils, fountain pens, markers and a brush and watercolor. For some exercises additional tools will be provided. (Be aware, that some exercises will produce a lot of scrawly results in your sketchbooks.)