Tag Archives: drink and draw

Women tattooing women at the Drink And Draw Berlin Tattoo Jam – on a boat!!

Lydia tattooing at Drink & Draw Berlin Tattoo Jam April 12 2019 by Suzanne ForbesWhat a lovely time we had!

This is Lydia, aka Lylicious Ink, tattooing a lovely lady, ON A BOAT. Lydia is a friend who is a fantastic artist who is now a tattoo artist, like Daria.

I went to the new Drink And Draw Berlin location finally, and holy heck it’s amazing. Drink And Draw’s classes and events are now held in a 90-year-old boat docked in the Historic Harbor by Markisches Museum. The atmosphere is so cozy, so charming, so superbly comfortable for drawing, I cannot even deal. I want to go back ASAP.

Here’s the Drink and Draw Berlin Insta, featuring ME!

Daria tattooing at Drink & Draw Berlin Tattoo Jam April 12 2019 by Suzanne ForbesDaria was tattooing in a mask, looking even more like an artist ninja than usual!

The woman Daria is tattooing is Fania Katz, an “illustrator and creator of weirdness from Berlin“. Fania is a native Berliner, and with Daria, a native Muscovite, and me, a Native New Yorker, sitting there, Daria said we had a mighty trinity.At Drink & Draw Berlin Tattoo Jam April 12 2019 by Suzanne Forbes

These two cool as hell friends of Lydia’s were talking about tat appointments, and one of them was also drawing.

I just was so happy there! There were groups of artists and tattooists working at tables and on couches throughout the boat’s comfy seating areas, and another woman tattoo artist, the fantastically badass Strix, working up on the stage, and people doing stick-and-poke.

Elliott doing stick and poke tattoo at Drink and Draw Berlin Tattoo Jam April 20 2019Suzanne ForbesThis is Elliott, stick-and-poke tattooing his own leg.

I knew people stick-and-poke tattooed themselves, as my incredible artist sister-in-law Caitlin has a number of beautiful works she has designed and done herself. But I’d never seen it happening live in front of me before! I was like, look, a hot boy stick-and-poking his own leg on a boat! What could possible be more Berlin? But then I remembered my friend Suz told me about a nonbinary person who stick-and-poke tattoos drunk club-goers on the party train U8 on Friday nights around 3am, and that is actually more Berlin 🙂

I had some lovely Fritz-Kola on the boat (local soft drink company well known for always sponsoring art events!) and altogether the nicest time.

Thanks, Drink and Draw Berlin! I’ll be back!

And always, my deepest and profoundest gratitude to my Patrons, who crowdfund my documentary art project of a feminist intersectional lens on Berlin life! You can help, with any amount you like per month, a dollar or euro is great ?

My Patrons on Patreon give monthly financial support which allows me to make this free documentary art available for all to share!

More experiments with pastels and mixed media.

Masks at Drink and Draw Berlin by Suzanne Forbes Aug 17 2017These are the last of the drawings from Drink and Draw Berlin’s Secret Society event, all finished up finally!

I took the opportunity to really experiment on these. Things like changing background color, adding large areas of midtones and heavy darks. Using pastels for the midtones and oil pastels to strengthen the blacks gives a really high-contrast image, much faster and more even than using markers.

I feel like I am getting much better at suggesting the atmosphere of dark clubs and parties!At Drink and Draw Berlin by Suzanne Forbes Aug 17 2017

You can see how this approach would have improved a drawing like this one from the Skin Two fashion show in London in 2007. Both the drawings above and the one from ten years ago are times when I don’t have enough time to get good visual information for the background of a scene.

Choosing areas to treat as dark values and midtones gives the scene much more energy and resolution.

I’ve switched from the beige Canson Kraft to a new Canson Toned Grey sketchbook, so I’ll be posting drawings done on an actual grey midtone soon. It’s like a 30% grey; maybe after I finish that sketchbook I’ll try one with black paper!

Previous Secret Society here and here.