Cafe Nero - 6th May 2006

Back to my usual haunt for this trip, a big improvement from wobbling trains and darkened theatres.

This guy is a semi-regular, I don't see him every weekend but I have drawn him once before. I think I got a better likeness of him last time.

I've a feeling I shortened his arm in order to fit them on the page here, his arms just look a little squashed in to me now. But I've done much worse than this before for a first drawing of the day.

This bloke was sitting at one of the tables outside, so I drew him through the window. He was such an interesting shape I though he'd be good to draw, but I don't think I caught him that well. This is one of those drawings where the details look right taken separately, but don't really work together. It's enough of a caricature for you to be able to recognise him from this drawing, but that's not what I'm going for.

Still, I quite like the drawing, it does catch something about him and I like his face.

The is an odd one, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It looks like an ok drawing, but I know it looks absolutely nothing like the guy I was drawing. They're both thin, that's about it.

It looks so little like him that I can't get a picture of him in my mind at all from this drawing. If a drawing is reasonably close, I can usually picture the person I was drawing pretty closely. I guess that's because I must have observed them pretty closely and with at least some accuracy in order to get a decent drawing of them.

This is different, it's actually a pretty good likeness. I don't know what it is about people who are getting on a bit, but they're very interesting to draw.

He was sitting just a couple of tables away so I had a good view of him. I've seen him in the cafe a few times but this was the first time he was in a good position for drawing. He definitely realised I was drawing him, but he didn't seem that concerned. I thought about giving him more hair and making him look a bit younger just in case he asked to see the drawing. I didn't, and neither did he.

This is the last drawing from this trip. It's not a good likeness, you can't see much of his face anyway, but it's exactly how he was sitting, and how he holds his head. It always makes me happy when someone's body language makes it into a drawing. It doesn't happen very often, but it's as good a memory jogger as getting a good facial likeness. Even though he doesn't look like the this drawing, the drawing reminds me of him enough that I can still call him back to mind's eye two weeks later.

The cafe sketches are becoming pretty much routine now, once a week on a Saturday morning. I miss the odd week but it's been pretty regular now for the last couple of months. I don't get nervous now when I go down there, I don't feel quite so elated on the way home. But I still enjoy it a lot and I still think it's very good practice. As some of my other drawing exercises become more academic, I think it's good to be able to balance controlled academic type drawing conditions with proper working from life. I'm getting more interested in sight-size work, and plan to start some cast drawings. I could see a situation where you could feel a bit lost once you got out of your studio and tried to draw something real and alive if you'd become too dependent on rigid studio set ups. As long as I keep up these sketches I can't see that happening.

Back to cafe sketches home