Meet the correspondent: Rolf Schroeter > Berlin

“Since I can think, I was doodling, filling every blank surface with scrawls. Then sketchbooks channeled that passion a bit more.

After finishing architecture studies ten years ago, I moved to Berlin, where i work as an illustrator now. We got children, and there was not much time for sketching anymore.

Kids got older and I discovered Urban Sketchers. Maybe it was not lack of time, but lack of influence, that had constricted my sketching? Now I draw more than ever. Since I reactivated my sketching, my relation to Berlin intensified and I got somehow involved in the city.

I rarely go out for the exclusive purpose to draw, but I always carry sketchbook and pen with me and use it on every occasion. Most of my sketches are done in short breaks into my common everyday-movements. I choose topic, view etc. spontaneously and try to let a place flow with as few resistance as possible on the sheet, trying, to get “disturbing me” out of the way. I like this state of concentrated “self-unawareness.” Hopefully occasionally something of “common interest” emerges from that practice…”

• Rolf’s sketches on flickr.
• Rolf’s blog.
• Rolf’s website.