The point of any practice surely is to learn, evaluating as one goes so that there is some kind of betterment. Nevertheless, getting stuck in those formulaic methods of seeing and responding still happens, particularly, as with reportage drawing, the mark-making has to be so fast and reactive.
I know that my coffee shop drawings lack context. Too hung up on trying to show gait, details of clothes, interactions with others, I am often unable to describe the environment in which they are sitting or queuing.
The intention is there but I have to say it’s the human content that most moves and engages me.
As do the personal narratives therein, or at least the ones I attach to those that I sketch. Like the girl with long blonde hair who sat at the table across from us watching some kind of broadcast on her phone (that I imagined to be live footage from Ukraine) her face full of concern.
Or the man standing in the interminable queue reading the headlines of his paper, no doubt caught by the same awful drama that I imagined her to be.
As was the man with the terrier, who he always balances on his knee, and his friend, who looks ill and lost, who I overheard discussing the invasion.
There’s so much to relate and sometimes my energy and my confidence fails me. And then there are the regulars who I try to draw over and over and don’t succeed. Some unnerve me because I sense their reluctance to be so closely monitored, like ‘Dylan Thomas’ or the ‘Track-suit Man’.
They are both shy, clearly, diffident men. Though ‘Dylan’ rallies when he has to engage with the staff, making jokes (or at least responding to theirs) but his awkwardness is there in the way he holds his body, lost in all that bagginess. And ‘TSM’ – he fascinates me. He is utterly self-contained and so decided in his dress.
Do I harm these strangers by taking their likenesses? Do I hurt them by posting them here? I sent one image to someone I know vaguely and she seemed delighted with it and asked if she could put it up on her Instagram account. A small fillip and then the flatness comes and I think what it is all for.
I may not get the grant after my second submission and then what? Meanwhile, I’m amassing a great stock of sketchbooks – what for? Posterity? And then, comes a gift.
Unbeknown to me, she’d been observing me from the queue. And the next thing she was standing before me. ‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said,’ and they’re amazing!’ She had her hand on her heart. ‘You’ve made my day!’ she said. Is it enough? It was then.
