April 6th - 10th coffee shop drawings

Well,  someone finally called me out on drawing them when I was at Casbah the other day, and it didn't end in a punch in the face. I don't know why I have this fear of people getting mad or something, maybe there's a part of me that thinks I'm transgressing some social rule and that I'm being rude by drawing people without their permission... I know, it's silly of me. But anyway, I like trying to draw people sitting barely a foot away from me - I get some satisfaction out of being fast enough to draw them and not have them catch me. There's something strangely subversive about it. Plus, I'm able to pick up details that I can't make out when the unwitting sitter is way across the room from me. I had just finished drawing this dude who was sitting at a table next to mine as he typed away at his laptop, when said dude sat back, looked at my sketchbook, did a double-take, and then asked, "hey, is that me?". I was happy that his response to a complete stranger drawing him was positive, and I was also a little proud that my drawing looked enough like him that he was able to recognize the back of his head.  He's the dude in the 4th drawing from the bottom. I'm glad he didn't try to kick me or rip the drawing out of my sketchbook. Instead, he turned out to be super cool and friendly, and actually, there were a few other people I struck up a conversation with that day, so it was just that kind of day...

The first two drawings from the top I did at Literati Cafe in Santa Monica- it's a great place to draw, and I went there a lot to draw people when I was on a gig that was super close to Literati, but since I'm not working on the westside at the moment (thank God), it's now a little too hella far for me. But I happened to be in the area a week ago, so I decided to stop by and get some drawing in. I had been drawing for awhile when this attractive, rather jockish-looking kind of guy walked in, sat at a table a few rows in front of me and pulled out, get this, RUSSIAN language books! If you know how much of a language dork I am, then you know how intrigued I was.  So I spent about an hour debating whether I should move to the very empty table next to him to ask the obvious question, "hey, are those Russian language books?". Even though he caught me drawing him more than once (of course I drew him, it's not often that I get the chance to draw a random cute dude studying freaking RUSSIAN), and he kind of held my gaze a little, I just didn't have the guts to make myself get up and strike up a conversation. So, of course, by the time I started having nerdy fantasies of us geeking out over the Cyrillic alphabet, he picked up his books and walked out. He's at the bottom of the first drawing from the top, with his shoulder blocking the bottom half of his face. Could he have taught me Russian? I guess I'll never know...