Tag Archives: Berlin drawing

A New York city subway car underneath a dollhouse in Berlin.

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Extreme Sets NYC subway car customized by Suzanne Forbes Feb 2020Sometimes it takes me a really long time to finish a project.

Extreme Sets NYC subway car customized by Suzanne Forbes Feb 2020 Virginia Slims adLike, years and years! Loved ones brought me Extreme Sets’ NYC subway car and subway station from the States in the Fall of 2017.

I customized and installed the station pretty quickly, but then there were problems with the lighting. (There are ALWAYS problems with miniature lighting.) I decided to wait a bit and see what I could figure out.

I researched many different types of lights. I got a new type of LED strips for the station, then decided they wouldn’t work. It still has no lights!

I did permanently assemble the subway car seats, using a combination of hot glue and carpet tape to really square them up nicely, and filled in gaps with my beloved Apoxie Sculpt, a cleaner and more paintable finish than spackle. And I spent several years finding vintage 1980s ads to line the headers and side panels. Brooke Shields for Calvin! Take the Plane to the Train! And of course, Crazy Eddie! He’s practically GIVING this stuff away!!!

But I was nervous about the lights. I studied the solutions in use by action figure diorama people, and battery-operated flexible LED strips with adhesive backs seemed the clear winner.

So I did the final customizing and light install on the car…this month!!

I decided Winter 2020 would be my midlife nostalgia and taking stock time.

Extreme Sets NYC subway car customized by Suzanne Forbes Feb 2020 doorsSomehow, I found the psychic strength and motivation to tackle the huge archive project I’d been putting off since the summer of 2015.

The New Mutants movie is finally coming out.

And hub and I got to the third season of The Deuce, where they are in 1984. The silhouettes of the coats and the way people’s bangs moved gave me such a stab in the heart of grief, loss and unstuck-in-time that I had to stop our watching for a month.

Then once I’d dug into the archives for a couple weeks I was like fine, I can take it, I’m literally soaking in it anyway.

So we watched the rest of The Deuce, and I’m on twitter talking to the New Mutants fans, and on Instagram talking to the wonderful storyboard artist for the movie, Ashley Guillory, and it’s just 80s all over the place. It is poignant, piquant, sickening, and motivating.

I made the arms for the seats by softening styrene cylinders with a lighter, and yikes they looked like my old drug pipe, lying around.

I had to quickly throw out the failed tries (bending styrene is hard!) because seeing them out of the corner of my eye was freaking me out. Once spraypainted silver, though, they look great!

I didn’t tag the subway car with real writer’s tags, for the most part.

I was drained by the emotional work of connecting with all this material, and unnerved by the shockingly real look of the car. I just made up lots of random tags. “SEO” actually appears multiple times, because it looked good! I put up the tags of my dead boyfriends and old friends here and there, in the layers of gray-scale marker, but I let it not be the focus. I needed to get this project done, at last.

It is shocking that I survived, and critical that I work, for all the ones who didn’t.

Having this piece done, and putting it in its cubicle underneath the dollhouse, is like sealing up the now-recorded archives of 80s and 90s artwork. It creates a way forward where nostalgia and grief are gently given their places, and respectfully packaged, out of view of my daily life.

You can read more about my dollhouses and their function as memory palace (Gedächtnispalast), Valhalla and memorial below.

My first action figure dollhouse. My action figure subway station. The X-Men’s dollhouse.

My Rahne and Dani lovebird action figure customs, Douglock custom, and queer New Mutants art from my archives.

The New York subway I knew, in the 80s.

Truly underground model drawing, with Barsketcher Alexandra Ru and Chiqui Love!

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Watercolor marker drawing of Chiqui Love in red by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020I have been meaning to go to one of Alexandra’s drawing sessions for YEARS!

Alexandra is a terrific artist who organizes drawing meetups, sessions and classes all over town – museum days, bar nights, life drawing and more. Just by accident last night I saw a post from Chiqui Love of the BSC, who said she was about to model for one, burlesque themed! I dropped everything, packed up my new gear and skibbled across town!

Watercolor marker drawing of Chiqui Love by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020For years I have been loving the watercolor washes other artists use for life drawing.

Alexandra does a particularly nice job. So I decided to take a step towards that approach, and ordered a bunch of watercolor brush pens, and some Strathmore Toned Gray paper for wet media. I figured it might be a disaster, but what the hell!

Watercolor marker and ink sketch of Chiqui Love by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020This session was put on by Alexandra and Liana Gilman, who share a studio space called Sketcherei, where they also host drawing.

Watercolor marker and ink sketch of Chiqui Love by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020The venue was a bar near Gorlitzer Park called “It’s A Bar”. The night was dark and rainy and I was not a little skittish about being closer to Gorli than I ever have on foot – not that I am afraid of drug dealers, I just don’t have any reason to interact with them.

I found the bar though, and made my way down the most rickety flight of stairs I have ever seen, into an underground chamber seemingly carved out of several random basements and infrastructure.

People say Berlin is gentrified now, but they don’t realize how different gentrified here and gentrified in the States is. Berlin is like West Oakland in 1997, plus a war.

There’s no visible awareness of law enforcement, building codes, fire safety regulations, or secondary exits in most places, and people have just been digging out the rubble and building shit for 75 YEARS. It’s like the East Village in 1984.

There is still a lot of magic in Berlin. And still a lot of accessibility issues. I am more aware of the access issues all the time.

Watercolor marker drawing of Chiqui Love by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020 detailAlexandra had kindly reserved the one chair with a back for me, and I made it down the stairs once, but no way was I trying them again for a beverage or the toilet! Most of the Barsketcher crew is lovely young people, who skittered up and down the coffin-like stairwell like mountain goats and sat comfortably about the levels of the underground grotto.

The secret space made a terrific drawing area and the lighting was bright and clear. Chiqui is a wonderful model, and she had excellent costumes and tunes.

I had no idea how to manage my watercolor brush pens, my water glass for refilling the water reservoir, plus my usual tools. And no idea how to use the brush pens! Which was great.

It’s terrific to use new tools, because I am VERY stuck in my routines. It was kinda hilarious though, water flying everywhere, me pouring water in my palm and then just smearing it across the lines to get a wash. I also quickly found myself scruffing the nylon bristles of the brushes across the smooth paper.

I’d love to see how the brush pens perform on paper with some tooth.

I would have liked to do more quick gestures, but the only sketchbook I brought was the Strathmore Mixed Media, at a almost a euro per page, so the loose sketches are actually on the backs of the finished drawings!

I also wish I’d brought just sepia, brown and beige watercolor pens, rather than having a whole color palette. I don’t have the transparent media color mixing skills, especially under club conditions! On the grey paper, with transparent media, I definitely felt the absence of a high white value.

Mixed media drawing of Chiqui Love in red by Suzanne Forbes Jan 28 2020So I added white chalk marker and pastels to the watercolor pen drawings.

I’m not sure about the results – I feel like now they just look like my regular marker and pastel drawings. Which is not bad, it’s just the native temperament of the watercolor is lost. Also @chiquilovelovelove looks a little stocky here, and she is actually muscular but slimmer.

So adding the whites changed the visual impact of the forms in a way it doesn’t with my usual style. Fascinating!!

I want to try the watercolor approach again, but on white not gray paper. The Strathmore toned gray mixed media paper held up really well though.

Thank you @barsketcher and Liana for the lovely drawing sesh!

And always, always thank you so much to my Patrons on Patreon, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to experiment and grow as an artist, and to document Berlin life.