Athas

So as I'd mentioned before, I'd like to do some of my character portraits as the staff of Athas (the coffee shop I frequent) and since I've gone down there three times this week for cop reading I've also managed to get some good progress in this. This is mainly because my brain gives out after about two hours of notes and quotes but also because I managed to ask one of them if she'd be okay if I drew her. This made me feel a lot better as she was pretty positive about it (I feel like less of a creep now). after getting her approval I decided to go forward with lee (though apparently she spells it with an i so li? I'll have to ask how to spell everyone's names) and after showing her the sketch version, she was also really positive. Everyone who saw it recognised it as her without me having to tell them and I was told that the stance was just like hers. This made me really happy as its the more subtle aspects like this that I'm wanting to get down. Though Lauren has since told me that her tea towel in the apron pocket looks like a baby's coming out so I'll probably have to change the colour of that before I print. With renewed confidence I did some sketches of Sarah but didn't finish them, though I have been thinking that it'd be good to draw her with her hands covering her face as she seems to do this for every photo they put up to Instagram and it'd be good to continue the them for the exhibition. I then did a sketch of Joel that was pretty decent and as I'm bad at drawing men I decided to improve that one and use it as the one to be penned and coloured. There were a couple of tweaks I had to make in photoshop, like the hairline and his bun but I think the end result is pretty good. I'm particularly pleased with the beard as I don't think I've actually done a beard before and it took some work. I wanted to do an oval around him instead of them all having a rectangle but this was a lot more difficult to do and may need reworking before I print them for the exhibition. By the third day I was there word had got around that I was drawing them and I received quite a lot of positive views about it to various extents. Though as every member of staff seems to know now it seems I'll have to draw all of them instead of just a few. It seems really harsh now to pick and choose who I draw from the staff, so I guess I'll draw less other people or it'll be a really big brief.