This morning, I had several hours in Point Richmond while waiting for my daughter's class to end. Since I wasn't able to do a detailed interior sketch yesterday at Tender Greens, I decided to make that a priority today and went to Kaleidoscope Coffee.

This independent cafe is a major improvement over the Starbucks up the road! Here were my choices for possible views to draw.

Looking from the back towards the front of the cafe

So many great choices! I ended up choosing the view looking towards the back as I had already unpacked a lot of my art supplies on a table in the window in the front (if I finished quickly, I could sketch my view outside the window). Also, this view captures the great kaleidoscope-like artwork on the wall and ceiling.

I practiced using Steven Reddy's techniques from his Craftsy class, Sketching Interiors: Structure, Detail & Play. First, you need to consider several vantage points from which to sketch, then, make a thumbnail compositional sketch - identifying the foreground, middle ground, and background. Next, you block in the major shapes of your sketch in pencil and then, do a contour drawing of all the tangible edges in your sketch. After that, you apply a series of ink washes (1) a 25% India ink solution over all areas that are not white in your sketch, (2) a second application of the 25% solution over areas that you wish to darken from your first pass, (3) a final application of a 75% India ink solution on the darkest areas of your sketch.

Here is my sketch after following all of the above steps:

Steven often stops at this stage, but I continued with his two final steps: (1) adding a limited palette of watercolor glazes (which I added to because I don't really like the limited palette effect), and (2) adding hatching for darkest and texture. Here is my final version.

Final version with watercolor and hatching added.

I had about 15 minutes left before I needed to pick up Chloe, so I went outside and did a quick urban sketch using my waterproof Kuretake sable brush pen and my watercolors. This took me about 20 minutes from start to finish and yes, the girls complained when I picked them up 10 minutes late!

After practicing my landscape sketches this morning, my plan was to get some lunch and practice sketching interiors using Steven Reddy's techniques from his Craftsy class at Tender Greens. But, when I got to the restaurant, it was packed and the line for ordering and getting the food was long! I took advantage of this opportunity to quickly sketch the workers behind the counter as they made the food.

Food prep counter, dessert case & back counter

Patrons in line, cash registers, and coffee machines

I sketched using my Kuretake brush pen in line, which helped me sketch fast and loose. Once I got back to my table, I added water with a paint brush for the tone. In the end, it was too chaotic in there to do the detailed interior sketch I had planned, but I was grateful for the figure sketching practice!

2 Very Different Urban Sketches

Long Line Lunchtime Sketches

Portraits 68 - 70 for the 100 Day Project