I finally made it to a wonderful Velvet Creepers show at gorgeous Friedrichshain club Crack Bellmer!

I had had to cancel on these terrific performers TWICE before for health reasons, and I was so ready to document their Dark Cabaret beauty!! I mean, look at Dunja von K in latex and a black organza spiderweb bustle as a Black Widow – it doesn’t get any more insectalicious!

And so exquisitely Gothic!

Above, ethereal Lilly Mortis sings. I love the style of The Velvet Creepers!

It was the first test under field conditions of my new live-drawing technique combining watercolor brush pen with my usual pencil, markers, Faber Castell PITT artist’s pen and Tombow Dual brush pen. I sketched with the black watercolor brush pen quite a bit and I really liked it.

The drawing below of fabulous Creeper Fifi Fantôme dancing to “Just a Gigolo” was done almost entirely with watercolor brush pen. I’ve drawn Fifi before, as you can see here, and that drawing is quite different.

I like the way the watercolor pen moves and feels!

I feel very free and easy using it. It’s especially great for hair and ellipses, as in the drawing of Dunja hooping below!

I have drawn master hooper Dunja several times before.

You can see drawings of her from last year here and here.

And of course there was the delightful MC, the one and only Scotty the Blue Bunny!

I have finally got a method of using color in my drawings that actually captures just how much Blue Bunny he is! Without Scotty the Blue Bunny Berlin’s burlesque scene would actually literally just fall apart and collapse! See his art, read his origin story in Playful Magazine!

I have another drawing in process, of two stylish hoopers who were in the audience, but as it has a good bit of background it will take a little longer to finish and I’ll get it up next month prolly.

I really, really loved the venue, Crack Bellmer, even though it is in Friedrichshain and even worse, in the legendary arts compound RAW, which is like Burning Man with (somewhat) more infrastructure and drug dealers, plus muddy cobbles. But Crack Bellmer is charming and cozy and reminds me of so many much-loved San Francisco and Oakland spaces of the Oughts. I would honestly go back there any time, even though it means hauling all the way across town.

Thanks so much to the Velvet Creepers for having me as a guest and making sure I had a comfortable space, drink tix and good light!

And thanks, always, to my Patrons on Patreon, who make it possible for me to document Berlin’s queer intersectional performance scene and release the artwork free to all.