Atlanta to Syracuse

On an early morning flight from Atlanta to Syracuse, I was able to have breakfast in the Atlanta airport (cafe intermezzo) and then for lunch, coffee at cafe Kubal in syracuse...then off to teach. Busy morning.

Andrew Petrie comes home

To cap off an amazing year...we had the amazing blessing of wecoming Andrew into our lives. My wife delivered Andrew at 6:57 am Dec 31, 2011. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 11 oz. healthy and fiesty, he and mom are doing great. We just brought them home today. En route we stopped at Kubal for a nice lunch and coffee.here is his first coffee sketch. Below, a photo of his first hour of being here and his first impressions. so happy!

Cafe Kubal Opening Downtown Syracuse

Cafe Kubal had their first day in Downtown Syracuse on December 12th. It was a quiet opening as they were fixing all the kinks. But It just happened I was downtown that day and was surprised to see them brewing the espresso. So I popped in and documented the opening in a brief sketch.

Return of the coffee sketches

Coffee sketching is practically therapeutic for me. There is a calming pattern of sighting a compositon out of basic forms at breakfast that begins a day with fresh eyes to design and appreciate the greater, broader and conversly more subtle compositions of the everyday.

As I discuss with my students, drawing is as much about recording as it is about editing. This series here, from over the last month or so is a typical gathering, documenting and editing of these caffeine vesels, their friends and morning habitat. Enjoy!

601 Tully Sketch

A quick visit to 601 Tully in Syarcause, NY provided the opportunity to do a coffee sketch...something that was long over-due. This fact is somewhat obvious in the limited clarity of the over all composition. Usually these drawings compose themselves by rules of proportion and geometry based on the cup, but in this case the geometry of the cup competes with the perspective/elevation of the front counter (where you can see Matt the purveyor of Cafe Kubal, exploring his iphone).

Somewhat more frantic then other coffee sketches, the complexity is somewhatintriguing, the tone of the coffee is nice and there are some relatively strong aspects, but overall it reveals how without the daily exercise of drawing, how quickly we can loose our discipline.