COVID-19 vs The Sketching Project & Sketch 35: Portuguese Coffee Break

As we find ourselves locked down under a worldwide quarantine, The Sketching Project is back!

We would love to travel and move around, but we can't. Let's use this time to do all the other things we wanted to but never had time. Let's read and educate ourselves. Do online courses, follow workout calendars and cook fancy dishes. Reflect on our careers and personal life and ask where we are going.

And, importantly: LET'S READ THOSE TRAVEL DIARIES and LOOK AT PHOTOS. For me, these two are so exciting! Now is the time to travel in our memories, since we cannot visit places for real. We are 'stuck at home', but our minds and imagination are free to wander.

Not only we cannot travel, but we also can't go outside and spend time in public spaces. Something we all take for granted is now threatened, but also can be appreciated.

Let's begin our journey in the poetic streets of southern Portugal, where I walked just over a month ago, and with a sketchbook in my hand...

Sketch 35: Portuguese Coffee Break

I miss seeing people hanging out. I miss the smell of fresh coffee, the sound on faint noise in the streets, and the feeling that other people surround me. I don't necessarily go to public spaces to talk to people. I go and do my own thing: eat, read or shop, or to sit in a cafe with my laptop. Simple things. What feels good though, is that I am not alone in doing that. That there are other people, doing their things, and we are in this together. I miss that a lot.

The sketch of today takes you to Lagos, southern Portugal. A place of cafes full of people reading newspapers, savouring their espressos and satisfying their sweet tooth. A place of street musicians, colourful frontages of local businesses, with a smell of the sea in the air and streets full of trees. It was a sunny day, with kids eating ice-creams and young women taking out their summer dresses. It felt amazing to walk down the streets and to engage in this collective activity of hanging out outdoors and enjoying the sunshine.

Location (sketch and photos): Lagos, southern Portugal

Date: 11 am, 25th February

Want more?

Click here to explore published sketches and stories from Nepal. Experience the (for most tourists now irreversibly lost) authenticity of this country through my eyes and in this very moment.

Tereza