Brooklyn’s Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant (27405 US Highway 27, Leesburg, Florida) has to be the most sketched Pizza joints in Lake County Florida. When my food supply would run out I would head out one night to Brooklyn Pizza for some spaghetti or a small pizza pie. Both options offered comfort food before my next grocery run.
On this pizza run there was an older couple seated in the corner which offered my only hope for some figurative drawing. On past outings to Brooklyn Pizza there has been a large group of retirees from the Villages who would sit at the center tables and chat while waiting for their large orders to arrive. On this evening I arrived early before any major crowd.
In the corner of the room was the waitress station. In that corner they would talk and compare notes. That is where the soda machine is and the waitresses were always generous with the cup refills. Returning to a restaurant or venue time and again offers a chance to get to feel the ebb and flow of a place. It would be nice to return to sketch the kitchen and back counter areas. All these everyday mundane moments are what makes for great sketches.
After getting my sketch for the day, I always liked returning to my roommate who at this time was involved in a magnificent creative project. Being in a collaborative open studio was new and exciting. I was working on posters for the Orlando Shakespeare Theater at the time, but that work was all done one my iPad while sitting on the couch. My studio situation, was the definition of being an artist being a couch potato.