Rooster Cafe

The Rooster Cafe, my latest cafe drawing and the toughest one I've done up to this point. I knew it would be a doozy to colour when I was black lining it and it was true.

Voulez-Vous Cafe

As I mentioned in the Good Neighbour post, anytime I invest a bit of time and energy into a drawing I remember certain conditions that surrounded me when I drew that image. For this drawing, it was the the proprietress' French accent and how she pronounced, "Vermeer". Made me slightly weak in the knees.

The Good Neighbour

Here's the Good Neighbour drawing, in part for M.B., but also I wanted to post something since it's been ages since my last one.

This image and the "Voulez-Vous Cafe" drawing were actually black lined quite a few weeks ago but I only finished colouring them yesterday. A slight burn out with the cafe drawings, but here they are. It's funny, but when I look at any drawing that I've invested some time in, I could remember exactly what was going around me when I drew it. With this one, there were two gentlemen sitting beside me talking about the nature of love. Actually it was the younger of the two men who was asking his friend what love was? Was he in love? I believe when they did leave, the younger man did think he was in love with his girlfriend. Isn't that sweet.

You are cordially invited…

They're up and ready to go. I chose the 7 strongest cafe images and hopefully the guests will enjoy them as much as I do. Apparently the gallery contacted all the cafe owners and they might even show up for the opening.


Well 7 of my cafe drawings are up and I received the invite to the show at the Freedom Clothing Collective. It's a small venue and I'll be showing with another artist, but I'm pretty excited!

literally, the last images I drew for the show

Naco Cafe and Gallery revisited

So a few days ago I noticed Naco Cafe redecorated their interior, namely moving their bar to accommodate a few more tables. Reason enough to sketch it again, no? Looking at it now, I think I preferred the first attempt at this space. It's unfortunate that the back of the chair in the foreground rides directly up the man's back side...live and learn.

Blondies

Blondies is a cafe during the day and club during the night. It's quite evident what it was with the disco ball and strippers pole in the back. I particularly liked the antler chandeliers.

All Things Tea

I did this drawing a few days ago and just finished colouring a few minutes ago. I had fun doing it and found out that the green tea I ordered should be steeped for two minutes in 170ºC water. Well I did just that and it tasted like… green tea. The gentleman in this image was on the first day of his job. The three hours I was there he acquitted himself well with the customers coming in. Good job!

I also continued using the minion pro typeface. Had a hell of a time eyeballing all those letters and I found that it was ok that each letter that was repeated didn't have to be identical to the previously drawn one...gives it some character.

Belljar Café

This is another little cafe off the beaten track. It's just east of the trendy Roncesvalle neighbourhood in the west end of the city and it's a relatively new cafe. It has a 1950's feel to it, even though I didn't capture it in this image, it screams of chilling out.

Apparently the name was gotten from Sylvia Plath's novel and instead of having the negative connotation applied to this cafe, the owner wanted this a place to be an incubator of ideas. Works for me.

Niche Cafe

i am still amazed at the number of indie cafes in Toronto. Niche Cafe is the latest one I have been to and they served the most amazing green tea with a coconut infusion... had it with a bit of honey... spot on!

Wagamama Cafe

Wagamama, in Japanese means "selfish". That's what Miwa Yamada's parents called her as a child. So when she was old enough she was so "wagamama" that she opened up her own cafe.

This is my sixteenth cafe drawing, and it was feeling slightly burned out, so I thought i'd take a different approach to it. I laid down some yellow ink splatter and integrated some text. Not feeling it on this one.

Dark Horse Espresso Bar

Another indie cafe, the Dark Horse Espresso Bar, located a bit further east from my neighbourhood in the Arts and Design district. I decided to do this drawing while I was waiting to pick up my free copies of Spacing Magazine.

Quite the set of characters.

Lit Cafe

Lit Cafe is another fine addition to the collection of small independently run cafes in my neighbourhood. The one eye catching feature is the long bar made out of reclaimed Douglas Fir. As you could each length has been left in its rough form and combined to form a monolithic bar with a lot of character.

The bar name,"Lit", was bandies around between the owners family as they were all driving in a car and the owner said every time she drank one of her coffees she was lit up. Hence the name.

Spacing Magazine

It's finally out! About three months ago I emailed the art director of Spacing Magazine, a local magazine about Toronto urban issues, about my café illustrations. He loved them and asked if he could feature them in this Quarter's spring issue. Of course I said yes and the rest is history, as the saying goes!

However, as a newbie to the paid illustration world, the 3 months leading up to today, when I finally saw my drawings in print, I was wracked with paranoia. I emailed the AD a few times asking where I stood with it over the last three months and he never replied. I of course thought they regretted the decision of putting my illustrations in this issue and this was their way of saying, "beat it". Well the paranoia was vanquished today when I saw them finally in print.

I'm pretty stoked right now.

Orange Alert cafe

Well another day, another cafe. The jury's still out on this one. i know I don't love it, nor do I really hate it.

Green Beanery coffee house

Another installment to my coffee house series. What I didn't capture was the other half of this interior. They sold every piece of coffee equipment you could imagine to make, drink and play with coffee.

sketchbook 03/23/10

I returned to Balzac's and sketched on the second floor.

Cafe Bernate

One of the grand dames of the West Queen West neighbourhood, Cafe Bernate has been around since 1991. One real cool feature of this place is the concrete counter that the owner had poured himself. It's embedded with various items like keys, shells and even a bottle. Very cool.

Alternative Grounds Revisited.

As promised I returned to Alternative Grounds, an indy coffee house in the Roncesvalle neighbourhood, which I had sketched previously and this time in an attempt to grab a seat that would afford a window view. However, the coffee gods were not on my side and I had to grab a chair in the backroom. Despite the lack of a window view, there was this great chair that I was able to sketch. Right as I was settling down to sketch it, the occupant of the chair got up and left. I think she was nervous being the centre of my attention.

El Almacen

El Almacen, in Spanish, means a general store. Silvio, the proprietor of this new cafe along the Queen west strip was kind enough to talk to me about what made this place stand out from the other indy cafes in Toronto, even though it's only about a month old. The draw of this cafe is its mate in a gourd tea. Mate is a tea that has a lot of medicinal value to it and traditionally it's drunk from a gourd. Not to slap tradition in the face, I did just that and sat at El Almacen for a few hours sipping this tea while sketching this place.

The gourds can be seen on display on the two shelves in this image. According to the small leaflets available at the cafe the mate tea's benefits include:
1. It has the same amount of caffeine as coffee but doesn't have the same side effects like jitters and yellow teeth.

2. It makes you look younger. It has antioxidants and a higher concentration of polyphenols (a strong antioxidant)

3.Boosts the immune system

4. Helps you loose weight. (I don't think I need to loose anymore weight)

5. You look cool drinking the tea straight from the gourd. (That's why so many ladies were staring at me...I was cool)