Cafe Nero - 29th July 2006

There were no cafe sketches from last week since I was away for a few days over the weekend, celebrating a friends birthday. It would be nice to round off July with some nice drawings, but today wasn't one of the better trips.

Usually, I start off rough and get better. Today, I started better and got progressively worse. This one is probably the best one from today, even though it was done very quickly. Young people don't sit around for long, and they generally don't sit very still either, which is partly why I draw so many crumblies.

But this girl was nice enough to give me about five minutes of her time before leaving, and I was lucky enough to get the drawing pretty much finished in that time.

This one was a bit of a desperate attempt. She was sitting well away from me which meant I had a hard time seeing her properly, but for some reason (probably the nice weather) the cafe was very quiet today and there weren't many opportunities.

This one, although I don't think it came out too bad, was a bit of a struggle. Sometimes drawings just seem to run away from me no matter how much I try to concentrate on simplifying the shapes. I managed to pull it back enough for it to be at least a passable resemblance though.

Talking of drawings running away from me, here's a case in point. No matter how I tried, how many corrections I made, I just couldn't seem to get this one to work. It's a shame because I had quite a long time with this guy, he's a regular and quite distinctive, and I would have liked to get a good drawing of him. There's nothing like having a drawing fall apart before your eyes to destroy your confidence. I thought I was getting consistently better at these drawings, but it only takes a couple of bad ones to make me wonder if that's true.

This was another desperate attempt. This guy was right across the room from me, largely in shadow, but being as there weren't any really good models today, I tried with him. This was also another one of those times when the person leaves before I can get the drawing finished, so I had to complete it from memory. Anyone who knows me will happily tell you that I have a terrible memory, and I can't deny it. But I do think I need to work on my visual memory more. It should help with all my drawings. I need to think up some exercises designed to train my memory I think, and do a series of them.

So not such a great one today, but that happens sometimes. To be honest, I think I'm probably a little off the boil since day to day life has kept me from doing as much work as I'd like to recently. For at least the last fortnight, I haven't been drawing or painting something every day, as I know I should, if for no better reason than to simply sustain the level I've got to so far. One of the things I think I need now is a simple series of drawings that I can do any time. The new series of cast drawings is going to be very good for eye training, but it has one disadvantage: It means I can't move my set up till I've finished the drawing, in the last one's I expect to working for a few days on each drawing. That means that my easel and my work space are pretty much taken up until the drawing is finished, and I can't do anything else that requires an easel.

My room is small, and I don't really have the room for two set ups at once, although that would be the ideal situation. I also only have one easel. As well as some visual memory exercising, I think I need a way to be able to have two set ups on the go at once, despite the small size of my room. That's two new things on the to-do list then. Memory exercises and figure out a way to have two set ups. Buy another easel, basically.

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