Drawing Journal

I had three people asking what I was doing in a space of two days. This is unusual even considering the fact that I’ve been drawing the customers in the same coffee shop for almost five months now. The first one was a man we see regularly (the one I asked if he used patchouli oil). I’d been to the loo and I heard him talking to my partner on my way back. ‘Is your wife drawing?’ he said. The second was a Northern Irish woman who was sitting at a table next to ours with her daughter. I’d seen her looking over at me and as they got ready to go she too asked if I was drawing. She bubbled over with energy (perhaps it was excitement at seeing her daughter who is studying here). And the question soon led to an explanation of the fact that she’d ‘couldn’t draw for toffee’ but that her brother could but he gave it up to become a science teacher. She was marvellous, all those words spilling off her tongue, interspersed with an almost constant refrain of ‘What was I going to say?’ The third questioner was one of the wild swimmers that frequent the café after their morning dip. ‘Is she drawing?’ she asked my partner, adding, ‘Can I be nosy and have a look?’ She leant over and was seemingly delighted. ‘Gosh, aren’t you clever,’ she said, ‘and so fast. I can’t draw to save my life.’ I shrink from such notice and from having my books flicked through but it is also a warming thing somehow. After all, they are my subjects, are they not? When she asked ‘What do you do with them?’ that was altogether more tricky. ‘It’s drawing practice,’ I said, qualifying it by repeating, ‘I’m practicing.’ She just looked more bemused. And her question continued to hang in the air.

The uncertainty regarding the privacy and ‘safety’ of the people I draw preys on my mind. Am I hurting them? I ask myself. There’s the woman who came in alone, after being granted a respite day from her ‘frail’ husband, and the man we now call ‘tracksuit man’ (apparently he researches genealogy in the town’s library, though this doesn’t explain why he dresses like football coach with his tracksuit top tucked neatly into his tracksuit bottoms).

And the gaggle of girls with hair and tights in a variety of pinks who commandeered the long table.

I’d set myself the task of trying to capture the queue in its entirety. A challenging goal, I think.

Perhaps that’s it. The only way to get round the safety thing is to draw the now countless dogs who come to the shop with their owners.

Part of the reason that I began a daily drawing practice was in anticipation of a project for which I’d applied for funding. I heard over the weekend that I’d failed to secure it. One of their reasons for refusing my application was what they called GDPR, which I understand to be the protection of data and or children, possibly. There are clearly ethics at work, which make them uncertain about funding a project that involves the observation, drawing and noting down of unwitting strangers’ habits, mannerisms, features and conversations. It opens up a whole can of worms, don’t you think? If this is the case, what are artists to do? Are we to ask permission for every sketch we make? Am I hurting those I draw? I do it openly in cafes. Some look, most don’t. I don’t use names or describe where or when I am drawing. It’s Health and Safety gone mad, said my partner.

I drew as usual, trying to maintain a momentum that I’d begun and that I’m loathe to let go. Draw for yourself, says my partner, it’s reason enough.

The social distancing restrictions enforced on cafes by the Welsh government will be lifted in two weeks. Meanwhile, I, who miss the closeness of watching, drawing and listening to my fellow coffee shop customers, have to bide my time. ‘They are too far away’, I moan to my partner, frustrated that I can’t capture the faces of those I have come to love drawing. I make do and concentrate on the queue intent on rushing to catch details like shoes or hats, or the way they hold their bodies while they wait.

It’s so much harder to do. I have to draw quickly, almost before my brain is engaged. I opt for simple materials, a fountain pen and a water pen. It’s a hit and miss process. I also focus on the faces I know, like the small, middle-aged man with the big ears, who always nods at my partner prompting him to say to my afterwards, ‘I’ve no idea who he is.’ On Saturday he came in with a woman, one can only presume it was his wife, who brought a lurcher. They both petted and fussed over the dog and, swearing under my breath,  I struggled to pin them down.

The next day he came alone and sat staring into the distance.

His hair is almost white blonde. And when he walks it’s with a slight limp making it more of a roll than a step. There was also the man we now call Dylan Thomas.

His stance tells of his gaucheness and social awkwardness, though he tries hard to engage with the staff. They are fond of him, clearly. And he comes back and back for more coffee. Time and time again I fail to capture him. It’s so subtle that lean of his. As is the sadness in his sloping eyes, shadowy. He has a look of Eeyore. Sometimes he comes in with his father (at least they look alike). I heard him tell the manage that they were going to Swansea for the day to visit an auntie. ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice,’ she said, ‘don’t go to the MacDonald’s at Cross Hands, me and my friend, she’s a meat-eater both got food-poisoning there.’

Lap dogs seem to dominate the weekends in there. Owners have them on their laps feeding them titbits and remaining staunchly oblivious to the annoyance of their sharp, strident barks.

Children proliferate also. Though I have to admit that I like the cacophony that is created. It’s a warmth of sorts and I become absorbed in it. Roll on the end of the month.

The restrictions in Wales limiting the interaction in ‘our’ coffee shop seem set to continue. So I make do. I drew both Saturday and Sunday and focussed on trying to capture a sense of place, and whatever stillness there was. There’s a little table with two seats in the stairwell that a few people frequented, mostly single drinkers but the occasional couple, and it was they who absorbed my attention. There is always this internal panic – will I get their gestures, their gait, their characteristics before they move? I tried. A Malaysian girl occupied the table first. Ignoring her croissant and coffee she spent most of her time engrossed with her phone (at one point playing music from it which competed uncomfortably with the cafe’s own melodic fare). She looked sulky. The next day the middle-aged man who also reads his phone but from a plastic book-like holder took the table over, stretching right out. I was delighted. I love to draw him and since the current restrictions he’s taken to sitting at the other end of the shop out of reach of my fixed stare.

I drew him over and over again. ‘You really get him,’ said my partner. I don’t know. It’s a moveable thing and hard to pin down. I love the way he relaxes. He sits still, unlike many of my ‘sitters’, absorbed in what he is reading. And he is warmer towards us now, saying good morning, though if he is aware of my drawing him he is utterly uncurious. Later a big man came.

He too was phone-absorbed. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone in there reading a book. His flesh fell over his waistband in great folds. Smartly dressed in a button-down shirt and with tanned skin that set off his well-cut coiffure, he wore his glasses on his head like he was on a yacht in Cannes. He lay back in the chair to read, a supine position that he would suddenly spring from to devour his food and coffee. The weekend was quiet but with a steady flow of customers, which in some ways is better. There was enough energy to give me momentum but not too much so as to overwhelm.

I tried different tactics, drawing fast and slow, using line, wash and splurges of felt pen and ink. I don’t know, I need to get a distance from them. But the flow was good, and I felt I’d worked hard by the end of it. I miss hearing people’s chatter though. Yes, very much.

It’s gone well today, hasn’t it? asked my partner. Yes, I said, I think it has.

I’ve been writing and my drawing practice has inevitably been left to slide. And I’ve felt it. Stripped bare of all its usual jostle, noise and I must say amiability, the coffee shop where I practice has not been as forthcoming with either subject matter or energy. Staff are off, either with Covid or they are self-isolating, the opening hours are reduced, making the queues, when they do come, heavier and almost continual, and there is the usual post-Christmas ennui. I’ve tried to battle through it. (I used to cry in restaurants, now I cry in cafes.) Tea helps, nevertheless drawing well is such a fickle thing, or at least that is how it feels. And yet, as I know full well, all one can or has to do is keep going. After all, I’ve been learning to draw for over 40 years now. Each day (I’ve drawn over the last three or was it four?) I set myself new things to concentrate on – whether it is just using pen and wash, or focussing on trying to capture details, like people’s shoes or woolly hats, or the way they hold their bodies in the queue (almost everyone reads their phone when they have to wait – we can’t just do nothing, it seems), or as I did yesterday trying to use a few lines or sweeps of a brush to create solidity and form.

I want to push what I am capable of – to attempt to get more of a sense of place in my work, and of interactions in the queue. But there is always this imperative to draw fast, to capture the moment before it is lost, that extraneous details become tricky to include. I need to find shorthand ways of communicating what I see.

To use faster movements and to almost skip ahead of my mind which tethers my hands. I like the wash but it can get murky, and the use of colour though attractive mustn’t be used to obfuscate badly-observed drawing. I work hard, and it is very intensive. I get home and I am sucked dry of all energy. It is an authentic way of working for me – albeit hit and miss. And a day not doing it (when the need to do paid work is too compelling and indeed necessary) is a less shining one.