Illustrating Oxford: The Nosebag Cafe
This is a guest blog post by Artist Jim Robinson on his experience of illustrating The Nosebag cafe in Oxford for the Paint Pots and Coffee Cups book, out in May 2016.
I chose to do a painting of The Nosebag café in New Inn Hall Street because it’s a place I know well. Quirky and distinctive with its bay window and hanging sign, it’s the first café you come across after leaving Cornmarket Street, the main shopping street in the city. It’s the kind of place you meet friends to catch up over a cup of coffee and or a cream tea or a snack. The décor hasn’t changed much over the years. The William Morris wallpaper was replaced with Laura Ashley and there are beams everywhere and plenty of nooks and crannies to tuck yourself away for a gossip. Not much has changed over the years. You get a sense that it has a regular clientele who are busy wrapped up in their own conversations. As an artist this means you can sketch away without being disturbed as everyone ignores you. I checked with the managers so that they knew what I was doing and reminded them about the Oxford Cafes book project. They advised me where to sit so I would not be disturbed and have the best view. ‘No one ever sits there’, they assured me. So I got my free coffee, which was part of the deal, and sat down to start sketching the length of the café up to the second level beyond the service counter stacked with pots and bottles, cutlery and cakes.
It’s a whole new experience seeing the interior of a café as an artist. You start to see the jumble of assorted bits and pieces that staff grab in haste to serve customers and the challenge of illustrating the interior of one café so that it can still be distinguished from another.
Sketching the exterior was a little easier: it had the name of the café on signs and billboards and there was more to draw the eye. Getting the right angle and showing that people were going in and out was what I opted for. I had to mentally airbrush out the vans parked everywhere in the run up to Christmas when I had started this project. There was no way I was sketching outside in the narrow street so I had to use a series of photos and work on them in my studio at home. I checked with the manager to get the logo right — a donkey with its face firmly in a nosebag heavily laden with saddle bags either side. Appropriate for this café where it is eyes down and people unburdening cares and worries with friends and regulars over a warm cuppa served in thick green cups.
