voyeur

Maybe it’s because I’ve been drinking green tea this week, instead of the copious amount of coffee I usually swill down. Or maybe it’s the inspiring post I read on Draw Anyway yesterday. Whatever the reason, on my usual lunchtime Starbuckery, I decided to get in touch with my inner voyeur and sketch a few of the folks sitting around me. The ususpecting denizens of Starbucks are always good for an inexpensive, noncommital head drawing experiment.

You do have to be a bit cagey however. People tend to get a little uncomfortable when you stare at them for any period of time. So I catch glimpses, trying to get an overall feeling of their face. I do a quick drawing, then glance at them again a couple more times. If they are engrossed in a book, a conversation or their laptop it’s pretty easy. But honestly, I end up using my memory of their likeness, mixed with a little creative license most of the time.

I’m never really sure what I’ll end up with. Some folks lend themselves to caricatures, some require a little more serious consideration, and some are hardly more than a quick scribble, depending on how “on to me” they are. Mainly what I end up with is a sort of hybrid of caricature and portrait. I’m having too much fun trying to catch a feeling than worry about the proper perspective or alignment of features. Mr. Cooper, my head drawing instructor from years ago, would be appalled. But a good time is had by….well, me, and no one is the wiser. Except for anyone who looks at these sketches.

Could one of these sketches be someone you know?

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