Viking exhibition in the Martin Gropius Bau

The great viking exhibition in Martin Gropius Bau is still running till the 4th of January. "Die Wikinger" is curated by the National Museum of Denmark, the British Museum London and the museum for prehistory and early history Berlin.
Center piece of the exhibition is the tallest ever found longboat , the 37 metre (121,4 ft) long Roskilde 6.

During the whole period of the exhibition (from September to January) boatbuilders of the vikingship museum in Roskilde build a reconstruction of a yawl of the famous Gokstad ship by using techniques and tools from the viking age.

the rudder is already attached...

runestone with a depiction of the welcoming of warriors returning from the sea,

 8th century, Broa Sweden

During this last week the opening hours are from 10 AM - 10 PM.
Formerly on Alleszeichnen:
The Havhinghsten fra Glendalough in Berlin

seasonal greetings

Seasonal greetings to you all! A merry Christmas and all the best for 2015!!!

This year a really bad cold sneaked upon me and turned Christmas nearly into a Cristmess...
It all started with a subtly scratching throat on Monday...and then it knocked me completely out.

We still had to get the thousand things done you do before the season...but for now everything seemed only to be possible in complete slow motion.
I don't know how we managed to get that monstrous tree up into the 3rd floor...it is about 3,20 m tall (about 10,5 ft) and with the star on top it nearly touches the ceiling of the old building in which we're living in (I ordered it in advance from a befriended farmer...he told me he had big trees for a good price...I didn't really know how big big was...I love it though :-)! It's awesome!).

That's the view from the couch in the living room, where I'm exiled to be quarantined for at the moment:

For now it's still hot water bottle and fennel tea, so if you haven't received any personal message from me...please forbear I will do that soon! :-D

Anyways: we still had a great time, the kids had a blast and I'm looking forward to review the year.

Farewell for now, more to be heard from us soon.
:-)

 

Happy birthday, Adolph Menzel!

Today 199 years ago Adolph Menzel was born in Breslau.

This selfportrait (published on zeno.org) from 1899 showcases brilliantly the painterly drawing style of his late period: he used a broad and soft leaded carpenter's pencil and a stump to smudge the pencil(as you can especially see in the shadows).
This portrait is very interesting since hence he portrayed himself while he suffered from toothache. You can see the pain in his face and how hard it must have been to stay focussed while enduring the pain...
One can say that he truly stuck to his mottoes "All drawing is useful and drawing everything as well" ("alles Zeichnen ist nützlich, und Alles zeichnen auch.") and "nulla dies sine linea!" ("no day without a drawn line")

Menzel's grave is sited on the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof in Berlin Kreuzberg.
A beautiful and large graveyard at Bergmannstraße.

report in "Durch:starten"

There's a brief report on me and my work in the new issue of the "Durch:starten" the magazine of the German Job-information centre, which helps young people to introduce them to all kinds of possible professions.

I'm especially happy about this chance to introduce young people to the possibility to work as an illustrator/animator and about the developments in the german entertainment industry.
I remember that when I was searching for information on working in the field 15 years ago there was just none around; the industrially oriented animation schools were just about to embark and many of the professionals at that time were purely selftaught.