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The world of technology in watercolours. How the French illustrator Lapin portrays the Deutsches Museum

from Annette Lein , Annette Lein

For the first time in the history of the Deutsches Museum, we had an illustrator as our guest "Artist in Residence" on the Museum Island. For a fortnight, Lapin spent every day from 9am to 5pm in our exhibitions: drawing masterpieces of technology and portraying people in the museum. Lapin is French, lives in Barcelona and loves museums. He is an illustrator and author of many books. His pictures will be published as a book by the Deutsches Museum in May 2025 - as one of the highlights of the museum's 100th anniversary. Here he describes his experiences in an interview with Annette Lein.

Annette Lein (A): You are at the Deutsches Museum as an artist in residence, a painter in residence. What do your days look like?

Lapin (L): My days are pretty intense. I start my work at 9 a.m. when the museum opens and stay until it closes, which is about 5 p.m. I wish the museum would open more often. I wish the museum was open longer more often, for example during the Long Night of Museums. I spent 15 hours in the museum there, until 1am. On average, I managed to draw between five and ten, sometimes twelve pages. I visit each exhibition to see what best represents the respective collection. So it's two works in one. A kind of curatorial work to see what appeals to me the most or is the most representative, and then capturing the scene in a drawing.

Ein gezeichntetes Bild des Mondautos wird vor das ausgestellte Mondauto gehalten.

Lapins Zeichnung des Mondautos und im Hintergrund das Mondauto in der Ausstellung Raumfahrt. Photo: Deutsches Museum

A: What type of exhibit in the Deutsches Museum particularly interested you when you were painting or drawing?

L: I am enthusiastic about science and especially about inventions and innovations that can only be seen here. I was very moved to see Lilienthal's original glider in the workshop of the Schleißheim hangar. I am a great aviation enthusiast and Lilienthal is the pioneer of this discipline. Drawing the glider was something great for me. But every subject has its charm. It's very interesting to see how communication or photography have developed, for example. All these subjects tell so many stories. In my drawing work as "Artist in Residence", I try to create a connection to the objects and the stories they tell.

A: How many pictures have you painted?

L: I created about one hundred drawings. It was a very intensive project. I have done many artist residencies over the years and I like it when they are very intense, force me to dive deep and make me draw automatically. I no longer have to think about the technique. It's a state of being in the making: sketching without fear, one object at a time. If I thought too much, I would feel paralysed by such an assignment. It's a huge responsibility to have to create a book about a museum with so much history and so many objects. I know that I can't outline everything, so the book will be my selection and also show my personal view of the Deutsches Museum.

A: Is it right that you see something that interests you and then make the final drawing? You don't sketch in advance: you start and only try once.

L: There are no preliminary sketches. But I look at the object very carefully before I start sketching to find the right angle. What could be the narrative behind the sketch? Sometimes I include the space and the visitors, other times it's just the object, isolated and without any context. I start with fineliner, i.e. directly with ink and watercolours. There is no possibility of erasing anything. I have to be precise the first time. That gives the drawing a certain freshness. It looks alive. It's not a perfect drawing. You can see that it's a drawing that was created in a short space of time.

A: What materials do you use?

L: My materials are quite simple and traditional to begin with. I mainly use fineliners and watercolours. But I also use some mixed media: Coloured pencils or Gelly Rolls. What I like about watercolour and ink is that they are the same media that [William] Turner (1775-1851) or [Eugène] Delacroix (1798-1863) used when capturing a place or a situation. For me, there is nothing more efficient than these materials to work on location.

A: What will the book look like?

L: The book will be in the format of my original sketchbook and will look almost like a facsimile. However, I will change the order of the pages to make it a story. I'm working closely with the publishers of the Deutsches Museum to adapt the sketchbook into a finished work. The book will then be like a walk or a hike in the museum. When you read it, you will feel like you are turning the pages of my original sketchbook.

Photo: Deutsches Museum

A: What do you like about museums?

L: I have a kind of addiction to museums. I couldn't travel to a place without visiting a museum. A museum is very dense, it's concentrated. It's a part of history. I learn something new every day when I visit a museum and of course especially when I can immerse myself in a museum as deeply as I did when I worked with the Deutsches Museum. Being curious, stopping in front of an object that may not initially appeal to you, but then you see it and realise that it was important at the time: for example, the "dog kennel" [see (1) at the end of the article]. It's not an object I would have thought of before sketching it. But it's super cute and tells us something about the first concrete building in Germany. How many concrete buildings do we have today? It's crazy. And this tiny "doghouse" was at the beginning.

A: Was there an object that was particularly challenging, strange or difficult for you?

L: That's a difficult question, because many objects were difficult to draw. The Foucault pendulum comes to mind because it's so uncomplicated that I couldn't get lost in the details, and also because it's in motion. I love the simplicity of this experience. The idea behind it is so clever. You've found a way to prove that the earth rotates through such a simple experiment that everyone can understand. It was one of the most difficult but also simplest objects, and it was interesting at the same time.

A: Thank you very much for the interview and especially thank you for the beautiful drawings. I'm really looking forward to the publication of the book.

L: Many thanks to the team at the Deutsches Museum, I received great support for my work on site. And of course many thanks to the publishers of the Deutsches Museum for the good co-operation. I liked it so much that I might come back to Munich for the 100th anniversary in May 2025 when the book is published. I'm already longing for the masterpieces of technology again.

(1) Lapin refers to the "Monier concrete dog kennel", inv. no. 66126, https://digital.deutsches-museum.de/de/digital-catalogue/collection-object/66126/#1exhibition "Bridges and Hydraulic Engineering". The dog kennel (1884) by building contractor and concrete construction pioneer Conrad Freytag was the first structure made of reinforced concrete in Germany.

Lapin sitzt auf der Straße und zeichnet in seinem Skizzenbuch.

Photo: copyright-info@timlanglotz.com | www.timlanglotz.com

More about Lapin

Lapin (1981) is a French artist living in Barcelona. He describes himself as a "mobile illustrator" and captures his life in drawings: over the past 20 years, he has filled more than 220 sketchbooks and published 48 books. He has been part of the Urban Sketchers community since its beginnings and was appointed official aerospace illustrator for the French army in 2019.
Lapin sketches on old business books he finds at flea markets. He travels light and doesn't need much more than a sketchbook, a felt-tip pen, watercolours and his folding stool. The street is his studio.

"... the simplicity of this experience"

The Foucault pendulum in the Deutsches Museum

The elegance and conciseness of Foucault's pendulum experiment in the Deutsches Museum was a particular challenge for Lapin. A lead ball that moves back and forth on a long rope, knocking over one cone after another, makes the rotation of the earth visible and audible. You can find the exhibition on site in the museum tower and online.

The Foucault pendulum

Publications from the museum

Deutsches Museum Publishing

Museum guide books, illustrated catalogues and the world of technology for children's eyes, specialist literature on the history of science and technology: the Deutsches Museum has its own publishing house and a broad publishing programme. Discover the diversity of our books.

Deutsches Museum Publishing

Author

Annette Lein

Annette Lein is head of the internet editorial team. Together with her team, she is responsible for the website and the Deutsches Museum App. In her blog, she likes to tell stories and personalities about the Deutsches Museum.

Her tip for a visit to the Deutsches Museum: The exhibition Bild Schrift Codes invites visitors to engage with the topic of communication while deciphering puzzles, familiarising themselves with fonts or browsing the bookshelf.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Annette Lein

Annette Lein is head of the internet editorial team. Together with her team, she is responsible for the website and the Deutsches Museum App. In her blog, she likes to tell stories and personalities about the Deutsches Museum.

Her tip for a visit to the Deutsches Museum: The exhibition Bild Schrift Codes invites visitors to engage with the topic of communication while deciphering puzzles, familiarising themselves with fonts or browsing the bookshelf.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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