Another drawing from India...

From a stone-carving I came across in the Jain museum in Kajuraho.

Approaching the Taj

My final India post...






...and the kicker.

More India...

The ancient temples of Kajuraho, which looked to me like alien spaceships, are encrusted with extraordinary figurative sculptures of men, women, and other beasts. I craned my neck and did a few drawings.

The top floor of the Pemayangtse Gompa in Sikkim contains a huge, enormously complex wooden sculpture depicting heavenly paradise. It reportedly took one monk five years to complete, and resembles something akin to a three-dimensional psychaedelic explosion — although to one more familiar with Buddhist iconography its inner logic is undoubtedly clearer.

Photographs are forbidden in Buddhist temples, but the monks didn't seem to mind me sitting down on the floor with my sketchbook to capture some details.





By the way, if anybody reading this can identify any of these guys, please enlighten me via a comment.

And another...

More from Die Marchenbrünnen...

One of my favorite discoveries in Berlin was the Die Marchenbrünnen ("Fairytale Fountain"), a public swimming-fountain surrounded by characters from the stories of the Brothers Grimm. According to my 2005 Rough Guide: "Intended as a gift to tenement-dwelling workers, it was put up in 1913 at the instigation of Social Democratic members, in direct contravention of the Kaiser's wishes."