I was invited to the Australian Embassy this month.

It was for an Australian comics event, and I had never been to an embassy, so I went! Of course I ran into someone I knew, because English-speaking Berlin is small 🙂 Since I was drawing civilians rather than performers, I decided to take a chance and start my Pencil Cleanse that night. Above, the Australian Ambassador to Berlin introduces the panel.

I was at the Schöneberg branch of Impala Coffee, the excellent indie Berlin chain, today.

For a long time! Because my foggy anxious brain (I am in the high-risk group for COVID-19 vulnerability) got me there two hours early to meet my friend. So I made this Pencil Cleanse drawing.

It’s so hard, and takes so long, to go back to pencil only!

I also worked on the pencil unterwegs, for a whole nother bus ride, though you’d never know it!

Can you even tell the difference after another forty minutes of work? (Today is on the right, previous on the left!)

It is more accurate, with more precisely judged perspective and scale, than anything I’ve done in ages, and I feel like I’m forced to observe so carefully, yet I can’t record with the same authority I can with ink. I know I keep correcting the angles, keep checking the perspective, and that it is good for my draftsmanship to draw this way. But dangit, it’s HARD!