Back to the Bakery
Back to my usual haunts – went on a short run and then a quick sketch of my favourite barista.
Stillman an Birn pocket beta, Windsor and Newton 0.5 fineliner and Schmincke and Daniel Smith watercolours.
Category: Drawing
Grosvenor Square Sketch
Quick sketch of the renewed Grosvenor Square garden in London.
Sketched on a Hahnemuhle A5 watercolour sketchbook.
The line sketch was done with a brush pen.
Shana Tova!
Happy new year, full of peace and blessings to us all.
Paris Sketches – September 2026
I’m travelling to Paris and London and I’m trying to both sketch much more and journal more consistently. The first leg of the trip is a four day stint in Paris and I just completed it.
Here are the sketches that I made:
I was tired and this came out wonky but I don’t mind as it captures the moment well and I had less than 10 minutes to get it done.
Sketch of the wonderful lunch at my favourite cafe:
I bought a Hahnemuhle A5 watercolour sketchbook and a new set of Uni Pin fineliners. This sketch of Place de la Sorbonne was done in situ with a brush pen but I ran out of time so I took reference photos and added the watercolour later.
I went to The Coffee, one of my favourite local cafes. I sketched the shop and the barista:
And had enough time to add watercolour. I was hesitant to show it to the barista once I was done but in the end I mustered the courage and did and she liked it.
Had about 10 minutes to sketch in the St Sulpice square which was enough to get some quick line work done and take some reference photos for later.
Finished it later:
Yesterday I went to the Notre Dame, my favourite, and managed to get a line sketch in my Hahnemuhle A5 watercolour sketchbook but then the heat and crowds were too much for me so I completed the sketch in my hotel room later that evening.
I tried sketching the interior of Patisserie Viennoise, my favourite cafe, this morning but didn’t find an inspiring angle so I just created a brief vignette in my Hahnemuhle:
Later I went to the Luxembourg gardens and sketched the Medici’s fountain. It was closed off to visitors for some sort of maintenance so I sketched it from a distance.
The complete sketch:
Bought an A5 Moleskine sketchbook on sale and made this sketch on the bumpy train ride from Paris to London:
So far I have managed to sketch and journal daily. London’s schedule is more hectic so we’ll see how things go there.
The shy barista
A rare sketch of the shy store manager at my favourite deli/cafe. The place was busy so she chipped in with barista duties.
Here it is with watercolour:
New Stillman and Birn Sketchbook
After finishing my previous Stillman and Birn pocket Beta sketchbook I started a new one. I normally use the first page to draw my palette, but this time I just skipped the first page and started a full page spread. I was sketching in my favourite cafe after a hot and humid run and for a change I decided to also sketch the fridge full of deli food.
I made a few mistakes with the original barista sketch, which I erased with a white gel pen. It’s not the cleanest, but that’s the nature of urban sketching. I also forgot to colour in the tomatoes in my sandwich – an omission that I’ll correct later.
It’s a bit of an unusual spread for me, but I like it enough to continue experimenting with spreads like it in this sketchbook.
Last page in my sketchbook
I filled the last page of my Stillman and Birn pocket beta today, a bit less than a year after starting it.
After a hot and humid run this morning I went to my favourite cafe and sketched Orit, my favourite barista. The line drawing was done with a Staedtler 0.8 pigment liner pen.
Then came the watercolours- Schmincke Horadam in a tiny art toolkit palette.
And here it is with Orit in the background.
Morning cafe sketch
I really like today’s cafe sketch, so I decided to post it.
Here’s the line work before I added watercolour:
Cafe sketches are a great way to get used to sketching people in real life. If you want to get started, take a sketchbook and a pen to a cafe near you, and just spend 10-15 minutes drawing as many people as you can.
Three tools sketch
I wasn’t feeling well earlier this week, so I decided to sketch close to home and to simplify my setup. I was feeling the “Toulouse Blues” (where you’re part of the urban sketchers community but miss out on the urban sketchers symposium in Toulouse), so I wanted to sketch to cheer myself up.
The setup was unusual for me on all counts:
- The notebook is a Leuccchturm1917 sketchbook that I’ve had since my first urban sketchers symposium in Porto back in 2018. It was Leucchturm’s first foray into sketchbooks, and so the paper isn’t the best. They have since improved it somewhat, even though it’s still far from a high end sketchbook. In this case I wanted something simple and serviceable, and it helped that this evoked fond memories of symposiums past.
- The pen is a Sailor Fude Mannen fountain pen with De Atramentis Black Document ink. I usually don’t bother with the Fude pen and use fineliners but in this case I wanted something more expressive.
- Two colors only – the green is a Faber Castell Polychromo earth green (172) and the Sienna is a Daniel Smith Quinacridone Sienna watercolor stick. That with a waterbrush provided the reddish earth tones on the tree trunk. The stick was a gift from the Poznan symposium goody bag, and I still find it very cumbersome and messy to use.
I kind of like the result, and I’ll try to create more experiments like it in the future.
Sunset at the Sea Overlook
I had about 10 minutes to sketch yesterday, so I took my new Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook (5 1/2 in. x 8 1/2 in.) a fineliner in sepia and black and a sepia brush pen and sketched this:
I edited out the bench in this scene as the people were more interesting.
I’m trying to get back into regular sketching, and I think that simplifying both the scene and my selection of tools will help. This experiment sadly badly failed – I put so many restrictions on myself that I got paralyzed into not sketching at all.
We try. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – but the point is to keep on trying. Sketch on!
