Coffee Shop Sketching (again)

Yes, more coffeeshop sketches. (Here’s the last post) I worked on these two pieces together on two adjoining pages, and I thought they’d end up looking more different than they do but oddly they look pretty much like they were sketched in the exact same way.

In this piece, I started by painting in very loose shapes for all the people. I even blocked in some of the background with paint, and only then did I get to the pen lines. You can tell by how you can see through the objects in front of the barista in the green apron.

In this second piece, I worked with paint first again, but this time I just drew in the whole setting, no people. Then I went back in with pen and did all the linework.

As similar as the two pieces ended up, I like working in process #2 better, because the way a scene is constructed is closer to how I feel it: the coffee shop remains the same, always. Solid and grounded. The people are transient. They come, stay just a little while and go.