I looked through my sketchbooks from Saturday and remembered the people I drew. I leave it a day to revisit my work. Paul Hogarth wouldn’t look at his drawings for three days after making them. A good practice, I think. Better cold. I drew for three hours. It took some time to get warmed up. The regulars came. The man who sometimes sits with the thin-faced, sharp-nosed woman came in with a man who I’ve seen countless times before. He is also very, very thin – his trousers hang off him and he has a mask but forgets to wear it over his face, choosing instead to leave it under his chin. I drew them over and over again trying to get some essence of their camaraderie. The less thin one was more animated, more energetic and moved constantly.
Then there was the small man with very baggy jeans whom they all greet loudly when he comes to the counter (which he does five or six times in one sitting). He calls a cappuccino by a jokey name (was it ‘rude-iccino’, is it something to do with the picture they ‘draw’ in the froth?) He is always alone and sits upstairs.
The effete man with the beautiful wife who looks sad also came in. He has green tea. He is tall and rangy with a cragged face and long, floppy faded blonde hair. They rarely talk, she stares into the middle distance and sips her coffee.
Then there were some new faces, inevitable on a Saturday. There was the woman with a mixed race child. She smiled so warmly at him, it was a pleasure to observe.
And there was another couple who I have seen a few times. She sat for a while on her own waiting for her husband to order the drinks. She too looked melancholic when solitary, her face fell a little but grew more animated when he joined her. He had a wonderful face, like a Basset Hound. And then a big, jolly-jumpered man with a long, long white beard sat with them and they both became quite energetic. An incongruous grouping.
There was another unsettling presence that made the manager a little louder and more hyperactive than usual. It was a woman, perhaps she was an area manager of some sort and she sat at the table just ahead of me working on her laptop and asked about orders and so on. Then she, rather abruptly, began helping behind the bar. She seemed amiable enough, but an alien nevertheless.
I always try, each day, to push my drawing. One gets into habits, a kind of shorthand takes over, particularly when having to respond quickly to perpetually moving bodies. And attempting to capture a scene or a full length body is always a challenge (as is the addition of colour).
Such as the boy or girl or non-gender specific person in the long black cord coat and wildly patterned trousers or the girl that stood with her legs and feet turned in or the two old men talking at a table before the effete man and wife. It amazes me how tired I get. Three hours is the most I can do, for now. I long for more finesse, for a beautiful line to just happen. The work of Searle, Peake and Hogarth seems so effortless. For me it is not.
