158. Overheard at the cafe
plus, a workshop in seattle!
Dear reader,
What role do cafes play in your life?
Are they pit stops to refuel? Are they places to see friends? Are they neutral territory, a kind of no-man’s land to meet people you don’t know - for meetings, interviews, or first dates?
In city life, cafes provide an essential public utility - coffee, snacks, wifi, and a place to get things done.
SneakyArt is secret art from my world. It is found in public places on ordinary days. It is created at the intersection of worlds colliding, in the thick of things, in the flux of everyday life.
If you like having SneakyArt in your inbox, help me reach more people.
🌳 Looking at Trees
I went viral on Reddit this week after posting about my drawing of trees in QE Park.
This drawing is available as a limited edition, signed, fine art print on my store!
🧏🏽♂️ Overheard at the cafe
It takes me longer to complete sketches in the new beige-tone sketchbook. As I mentioned in a recent Insider post:
… beige sits in the middle of my spectrum, somewhere between pure light and pitch-dark. With the fountain pen (for black) and a gelly roll pen (for white), I go both left and right on the spectrum. This changes everything.
The extra time means I cannot help but overhear several conversations. But because I am also paying attention to my drawing, I register only the odd snippet.
Sometimes it is the end of an emphatic sentence. Sometimes it is a vagrant phrase floating in the breeze that gets caught at the edges of my attention. It tugs again and again, persistent, until I hold it in my hands, disentangle it, and set it free.
Dear reader, what can we tell from a snippet? Can we tell stories? I am writing some in the comments. Join me!
[Consider] how I discovered the utility of cafes when I first began to walk with a sketchbook (in Chicago).
[Take a look] at the TinyPeople I found out of a cafe window, during 30 Days of Vancouver.
[Dwell upon] this phrase - a watering hole in the wilderness of urban life.
[Witness] a story I found in a cafe downtown, as I took shelter from the cold.
🚗 Visiting Seattle!
Readers in and around Seattle, I will be visiting next week from 14 Oct (Fri) to 17 Oct (Mon). I am excited to see Seattle for the first time and equally excited to meet with you!
To meet the most number of people, and share my best tips and ideas around sketching in public, I am organizing a laidback workshop/demo on Sunday 16 Oct near the Pike Place Market.
Insiders can attend this event for free. Get in touch for details!
In a recent TikTok, I shared my response to a comment I get from strangers all too often.
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And just when I needed it most, my distracted mind was re-balanced this week by a few good lines in a friend’s feed.
Thank you, reader, for your time and attention. I am glad to have a space in your inbox.
"You'll get reimbursed for that."
"How?"
"Just bill it to your employer. These big companies, they can just write it off!"
"What?"
"You know they write stuff off all the time, Jerry! They just ... write it off."
"Do you even know what a write-off is?"
#seinfeld
this post made me nostalgic. I'm reminded of this piece from the new yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/what-cafes-did-for-liberalism :)