Cafe Vignettes

One of the least stressful ways to draw people is to capture a page of little vignettes at a cafe where people are relaxing and catching up with friends. There’s a lot that can tell you about whether someone will be at a table for a while: Did they just order something to munch on? Can you tell if their drinks are closer to full than empty? (the tilt of a cup gives it away) Are the people deeply engaged in a conversation? Do they have fussy kids with them? Or pets that might look anxious to leave?

The nice thing about a page of vignettes is that they don’t all have to be “finished” to the same degree or share the same media. You can do some quick captures and mix them in with longer ones. You can intersperse line drawing with line and color, and annotate and explain bits of the scene that aren’t captured in your sketches.

Collectively, they are a capture of an experience with each sketch telling a small part of a bigger story.