While teaching my Crealde School of Art, Travel Sketching Course on Sunday morning, one of my students mentioned that she would be going to the World Cup Final at Point Orlando on International Drive. This was clearly an awesome sketch opportunity so I suggested that any students that were up to the challenge should sketch the World Cup. No one including myself, was really looking forward to going to International Drive but I suggested they document the game wherever they were.
I looked online and found that there were several bars in downtown Orlando that were showing the game. I walked downtown from my art studio and decided to walk to City Arts Factory. I knew they had a very large screen TV in the outdoor area. The TV was impressive when I got there but the crowd was small and forced to sit with their backs against a wall. The energy wasn’t right.
Up the road a Wall street there were more big screens set up outside. This is where I decided to settle. There were big screen TVs at either end of the street, but I opted to sketch inside a bar where three TVs were showing the game above the bar. There was something tribal and communal about everyone crowded around the bar and looking up at the big screens. I was offered a beer from one of the folks who looked at my sketch but my hands were full of pencils and pens and I had no place to put the drink down, so I declined.
I dragged a bar stool into the corner of the room near the entrance. I probably looked like a security guard taking notes. Actually, one of the security guards checked in with me several times to see the progress and he gave me a fist bump when the sketch was nearing completion.
I haven’t followed the world cup games at all. I didn’t even know which team was which until the bitter end of the game when Spain scored a point. The crowd went wild. I finished the sketch before the game was over and decided to walk back to my art studio. I stopped off at a pizza shop to grab a bite on the way. The place was crowded and the game was on two large TVs on either end of the restaurant. I got a booth right in front of one of the big screens. Since I was so close I could now see the players as they got tripped and injured. I couldn’t figure out when the game might end. Rather than a clock counting down the clock was counting upwards. I figured out that the game was about to end by the excitement in the announcers voices. Everyone in the pizza joint cheered when the final buzzer sounded. Spain was victorious. They were the team in the red jerseys.