Sketchbook: cafe ppl

When times (like now) are busy, I don't manage to attend my much-loved life drawing classes nor is there much opportunity to animate or work on my film and book projects. Long days and late evenings at the office is a regular thing with freelance art direction gigs. I'm usually brought onto projects as they ramp up, so it's the rare and much-appreciated lunch-break like the one I had last week that is the subject of today's post. I found a pocket of time to squeeze in some sketching in a nearby cafe. The results were mixed, but there was a much bigger purpose to it.

Drawing is almost always therapeutic, at least for me. Particularly when I'm doing it on my own time and not worrying too much about the end results. As I unwind and try to forget about work for a bit, I kind of let my eyes wander around the room as I eat and whatever grabs my attention for a few seconds gets scribbled:

From isolated head and shoulders

to the way an attentive person sits and listens to what's being said to them.

The guy in the corner engrossed in his bestseller,

or the (thankfully) silent baby surveying his surroundings (I swear he looked like this)

or even a quick study of a double chin, with not much else. There's so much on offer to observe and record even if it's only for a few seconds with each subject. The joy of sketching the world around you is it's own reward. Regardless of what ends up on paper, the personal journey your pencil, pen or brush takes you on is really where it's at. Electrifying all my senses at once - drawing, in its many forms, simultaneously educates, entertains and inspires me to no end.

On the way out I saw a guy playing with his phone. He had a specific look on his face and was so into what he was doing that he sat there with an odd posture that to me, seemed uncomfortably poised. Anyway, I tried to keep the image in my head for a memory sketch when I got back to my desk: