Sketch

October 6, 2024

I didn’t have a lot of time on my lunch break, so I had to make the most of it. Waiting tables was not my dream job, but it did allow me to see a lot of interesting looking people. One of the few things I loved about myself was that I was able to remember, in exquisite detail, every face I had ever seen. I discover that this was weird in 5th grade, and got made fun of relentlessly because I was able to remember a girl from the summer camp that I had gone to a couple years prior, and that she was now at our school. I am not sure how to describe it in full detail, but I can tell you exactly the way that they all made fun of me, calling me a stalker, because I remembered her face so well from year before.

I plopped down at one of the tables outside the restaurant so I had some real light. The light inside was dim and “romantic” according to my manager. I thought it felt like a Holister but for food. We pumped he smell of garlic bread throughout the space so that “made people drool from the moment they walked in” - which felt like a gross visual to me, but whatever keeps them in business I guess. I have so many faces to get down on the page from earlier in the day, so I pull out my sketch book and rummage through the pages until one is blank. This sketch book is almost full, and I am able to see so much growth from when I started this project, to today. I don’t have time to be proud, tough, I need to sketch. I had promised myself when I started this sketch book, six months before, that I would fill it up quickly and messily, but filled with portraits. In the fall I would be starting college and I wanted to get into the art program more than anything I had ever wanted before in my life.

Grabbing my brush pen from my apron, I drew every face that I could remember - from the woman who got mad about her hot coffee being too hot, to the old man who was eating alone and had left me a 150% tip, to the little boy who threw a fit when he didn’t get Mac and cheese (he had ordered chicken strips). I can’t get them onto the page fast enough, it feels as though they are following out of me. It gives me a sort of euphoria, drawing feverishly like this, I lose time to easily. My hair falls in my face, causing me to look at my watch - I only have two minutes left. I hadn’t even touched the sandwich I had made for myself, yet. I grab it in my left hand as I continue to draw with my right. How is it that time moves so fast when I am on break, and so slow when I am waiting tables?

I close up my sketchbook, throw in in the bottom on my apron, and I am back on.