What would Peet’s be like sitting with the indoor crowd?  Cozy anyway.  The warmth of the indoors.  Indoor atmosphere, the people in the atmosphere in this place.  (Oxford says of atmosphere: “pervading tone or mood of a place or situation”.  Is Peet’s also a situation?) The lights, the tables, people sitting closer to each other than they do outside, even from table to table, the auburn color of the walls. One difference is that I would have to sit with them, rather than outside them.  Everywhere is with everyone, there is no safe distance, to observe from.  So I take a chance.  

...sketch small.  I have a policy of never complaining about rain here, mostly because I like weather but also because we need it so badly.  But it did cause me to think, to refigure, since I couldn't work outside on my big drawing.  So inside I go.  It's one thing to "drawundercover" on big paper outside at Peet's where there's enough space to be anonymous, but inside it was out of the question.  I actually drew this one second but I put it first because it is my favorite, possibly my best portrait so far.

Even though, obviously, people meet others at Peet's for coffee or whatever, I don’t think I quite realized what really goes on between them when they sit here, and what an important role it plays in their lives, until one one day when I was working on this drawing. 

Recently I took a UCLA extension class called “Chinese Brush Painting”.  It sounded innocent enough.  

A little later than I expected since my last blog post, but here is the first brown and white drawing I did at Peet's!  Drawing at Peet's is very different than drawing at the museum, which is the last place I spent time.  I guess that is a good thing. It should not be the same I would think.  It is more difficult in some ways, but I have to think more on why that is.  Something to do with it being harder to know when to stop.

Peet's was one of the places I had it in my mind to work at, I had it all planned out as to where I would sit and what color paper and ink to use.  Not red, as you might think.

Here's one.

That vet I met a few weeks ago, whom I sketched, asked me if he could see my sketchbook.  When he saw this one he remarked: "Now this one, this one is much better, this tells the whole story.  See?".

One day when I first came here to work I found myself staring at the bar, and all I could think of was it looked like a blu-ray image on our T.V.

I have a story to tell you about the sketch that isn’t here.