Skip to main content


A café that has replaced its barstools with swings hanging from the ceiling.

Doll parts littered every aspect of this café, which seemed to be more of a bar when looking at the menu. Still had a nice children’s section though, as they were the bigger draw for the swings.

Music from what sounded like the 30s played over the speaker system. Perfectly paired by the accordions hanging from the ceiling and on the wall.

I took my leave of trying to fight the heat of the sun and got a tea, pulled out my watercolor painting, and began to sketch in books.

The girl working the bar sported a flatcap and as she stood behind the bar with nothing to do she seemed to work on a crossword puzzle in the newspaper. An air of ennui that disappeared as she took orders for drinks.

If this was an option to wander to everyday and work on my art I think I would quickly become one of the fixtures on the wall. If I ever owned a café…

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New Birth.

Hey. C'est moi.  It has been a few years. Since I last discussed into the void here I attended grad school for architecture at the University of Washington, finished the Master's program by the skin of my teeth, graduated into a global pandemic (I would not recommend this), gave away most of my worldly possessions, and am now flâneur-ing around Europe on the slim budget of my life savings. Allow me to reintroduce myself : I am the artist, Gaston. My interests include ; architecture, sustainability, art, vintage fashions, antiques, and flâneries. All while consuming massive quantities of tea. “I know where I'm from, but I don't know where I'm going.” I recently heard this line at a video playing at the Tate Museum in Liverpool, and it rang strong in me. In the film Casablanca, when Rick is questioned on his nationality he responds that his is a “drunkard,” insinuating that he has renounced his American nationality for that of someone who owns and runs a bar. From ...

Windy Coffee. [part 1]

Fulya was looking at my sketchbook the other day and remarked that she liked the random sketch that I had made of some girl that I saw walking along with a little plastic cup of coffee during the wind storm a few weeks past. As I still have some small pieces of very good watercolor paper [that I had sized to be used for some small frames I had collected but did not have anything to put in them yet], I thought that perhaps I could transfer a little sketch to a little piece of paper to play with techniques. Namely the layering of water colors. Something that I know I have been working on a lot, but practice makes perfect. I also wanted to see how using my new mechanical pencil filled with blue graphite would work in hiding my lines as I initially worked. I forgot to take a picture of the transition between not having the girl inked at all to inking her and starting the background. I was having a hell of a time trying to figure out a setting in which to put her. At first I was th...
French underworld tattoos at the turn of the century. The man sports a tattooed mustache intended to foil the prohibition of facial hair in the Foreign Legion. The World of Tattoo by Maarten Hesselt van Dinter. I can only dream of being anywhere near that combination of badass and crazy. Though at that point the Foreign Legion was probably still the best place for criminals to get their record cleaned so perhaps he is as well quite legitimately scary upon all of that. I find myself flipping back to this page time and time again to romanticize the French underground from around 1900. Give him an accordion, a beret, and some braces. Prostitutes who could easily kill you if you ever come up short and tattoo the names of their ‘actual’ lovers between their breasts, close to their heart. Tattoo ‘Je mother fucking t’aime’ in a tattoo cursive along my collar bones.