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Looking through some of my portfolios and realiszed that I had quite a number of street views (actually hundreds!) that were not really finished or progressed into something larger such as a full blown painting or illustration. I still use these as the basis for many new projects when I’ve not been anywhere for a while.

Quiet Berlin

A wonderful and peaceful residential area of Berlin and one that I find fascinating for the classical symmetry of the street architecture. Each corner brings another dimension, another street view, which though obviously familiar always has an air of discovery for me and I can’t help take the sketch book and manage a quick jotting or two.
One day I’ll have to post the original jottings as in many cases to my mind they are better and more revealing than the semi-finished color illustration I have here – but that’s for another day.

Many miles north I believe this next image – Stralsund way up on the Baltic and where the street architecture is quite different and so varied.  Many differing styles of course and yet still influenced by the ”Sundische Gotik” an early architectural style of the 1300′s, through to the later marvelous Swedish Baroque fancy gabled buildings – then completely ruined of course by the incorporation of the Soviet Zone and subsequent Democratic German Republic.

That you can recognize unfortunately – I call it the “concrete mono-slab” style, but for me before the war is special and those are just superb and an inspiration for a photographer or Artist at any time!

Architecture of Straslund, Pomerania.

I include in the little slide show below, the original photograph I took in Stralsund and used it as the basis for my highly colored piece, which does represent the true colors of the buildings by the way.
Whilst they are wonderfully colored I tend as always to saturate and highlight the stone painted colors as this without doubt brings the street alive and sets the “tone” of the place somehow – I love it. . . . .