More Catch Up

OK, so I have finally reached Seattle, the internet works, the boxes are slowly disappearing, and I may have the studio set up either tonight or tomorrow. August has been hectic with over 6000 miles of travel (over eight time zones) completed in about 16 days. So, I've been a slacker in the studio. Here is a little treat for all you patient readers, some sketches from my time in England and a few favorites from earlier in the summer. Hopefully more to come soon, as I mentioned we're working hard to unpack the studio so I can get back to work before my next international foray later this month.
Here is a collage of some of the regulars at Sweetwaters, my favorite coffeeshop in Ann Arbor.

This page was completed during my time in Boulder. I'm trying to include more white space in some of my compositions. I like the circular arrangement on the page, which plays with the ellipse of the face. Another bit of experimentation I've been trying is using different color lines to show when a person moved from his or her original position which you can see with the girl in the upper left.

Some images from the trains and cafes in England.

I played around with adding some patterning on this page after being inspired by the Bonnards and Vuillards in Paris. You can also see Chris driving on the wrong side of the sketchbook. :)

This became one of my favorite hangouts in Colchester, Caffe Nero, which is a nice coffeeshop chain in the UK. I wanted to experiment with using different colors and media to create levels of depth in the space. I began with dark brown and sepia markers for the foreground and then moved to the orange and ochre colored pencils. I may try to not use such chromatic colors for the background next time I try this, but it was a fun challenge.

I hope you all enjoyed the new images. I will be cranking on Bernanke, Florence, and a new illustration over the next few days so I should have more posts soon. :)