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.
