Drawing Journal

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.

It was all change when we returned to our coffee shop after Christmas. Stripped of tables and with a one way system marked out on the floor, I panicked. How or whom am I going to draw? Don’t indulge it, hissed my partner, as I tried to get a grip. After all that’s the way it is when you rely on life, fate, whatever you want to call it, to deliver something energetic and ultimately beyond your control to draw. I kept it simple, using just my pens and working with line and wash. It was like dragging myself through mud.

Mask wearing is now mandatory in Wales and because of the lack of seating the coffee buyers came and went with unusual speed. I decided to attempt to concentrate on gesture and gait but it was a come-down from all the energy and vigour I’d generated pre-Christmas.

And it’s a dead time this no-mans land between Christmas and New Year, the town is a ghost one. And the rain and wind don’t help. Even the usual clientele whom I draw regularly were either too far away or they didn’t bother coming. Keep going, my partner said, bringing me another tea. It’s got to be got through.

People did eventually start to arrive, one man in a pair of shorts (T**t, muttered my partner).

When facial features were lost to me due to masks I attempted to capture the extraneous stuff – boots, scarfs, haircuts – anything to just keep drawing. Just keep drawing. That’s all you have to do.