Today's first drawing, quite a nice one for a warm up. After eight hour self portraits, I was really ready for this. The release of just drawing for the hell of it instead of careful measuring and correcting felt good. I think that this is equally valid as practice though. Personally I find it very easy to obsess over details, and forget to step back and look at the big picture. It's the main reason I overwork a lot of my drawings. With these cafe drawings, there isn't time to think about much detail, so you have to make sure it's the right ones you put in.

I'm working with the same stuff here as I am in a portrait drawing, trying to see how the shapes relate to each other, to get them down right. But I only have time to think about the main shapes and a couple of details at best. I think that helps to break me out of my detail obsession and hopefully will be a skill I can use in portraits. Plus I love to draw people.

This guy was a real gift to draw, sitting quite still and with a lot of character.

Looking at it now, I can see that I've got his head much too long and thin, but at the time it looked fine. I was interested in getting his eyes against his glasses right.

I guess at the end of the day this is a caricature. The distortion was unintentional, but it does intensify his characteristics. That's not really something I'm supposed to be going for, but if I'm honest with myself I don't mind it. It helps to give an impression of his character, and happened quite naturally. I think a small amount of this in a portrait would be ok, as long as it was an honest thing and not included for 'style' reasons.

What drew me to draw this guy was his hair. He looked like a cross between Bono and Beethoven. I don't know what it was about today, but there was a steady stream of interesting people ready to sit for me.

He seemed to be waiting for someone who was late, he kept checking his watch and looking round. Eventually he must have decided that they weren't coming and left, but I managed to get most of him in before he did. The little fly happened to alight on my table, so he ended up in the drawing too.

I think the proportions came out better in this one. I anchored his ear and the front of his glasses early, which helped with laying the rest in. This is something I've picked up from the Bargue drawings. First anchor the highest and lowest points, and furthest east and west and relate everything to those. I didn't do exactly that with this one, but something close.

Not such a great one, this guy was too mobile and too far away, people kept getting in the way and by the time I could see him again he was in a different position. I kept on correcting, redrawing his body in the new position, but I was chasing something that didn't want to be caught with this drawing. That happens sometimes. What I do with these drawings a lot now is just wait when somebody moves. As like as not they'll get back to a similar position before too long and I can do a bit more. Not this time though, he appeared to have an endless repertoire of different position he liked to sit in. Not very helpful.

As soon as this old guy came in I wanted to draw him, there was just something about him. By a stroke of luck, he came and sat right in front of me. I drew him while he was eating his muffin and drinking his coffee. Often I wait for people to settle before I start to draw them, but I didn't want to miss this guy. Good job too, because as soon as he'd finished his coffee he was off. I'm quite happy with this drawing. I managed to catch something about him, he looked so tired.

Although he sat fairly still, his face was in constant motion as he ate and drank. Despite that, I seem to have got a reasonable likeness of him, at least an impression.

I think what's happening now is that through my practice my visual memory is getting stronger. I lose less information as my eye moves from what I'm seeing to the paper. Or perhaps it's that I'm carrying more information over, more correctly, because I picked up more information first place by seeing more carefully. I find that now I spend longer periods looking whilst I'm drawing, where before I would be flicking from model to paper, sometimes drawing as I looked at the model and not at what I was doing. That may have it's place, Frederick Franck would recommend it, but it's not good for accuracy. I definitely spend more time looking than I do drawing now.

This was one of those rare moments when I see something I really want to draw, and I have long enough to get it down, as close as I can to what I see. Those moments are the best things to come out of these trips to the cafe. I feel I have a connection with this old guy now, and this drawing means more to me because of that. If I see him again in the cafe, it'll be like seeing a friend.