Downtown Mobile’s arts scene picked up a new, informal gathering spot last week when local artists met at Serda’s Coffee Company on South Royal Street for the city’s first “Drink and Draw” session.
Held the evening of Friday, April 16, the event invited artists of every skill level, professional and amateur, to sketch whatever caught their eye inside the coffee shop — the space itself, the staff and customers, a live band playing that night, or fellow artists at nearby tables.
There were no assignments, no instructors and no jury at the door. Participants ordered a drink, found a seat and drew for as long as they liked, which organizers described as the whole point of the format. The only requirement was a willingness to put pencil to paper in public.
The idea came from Mobile artist Caleb Morris, who adapted it from a trio of artists in Los Angeles known for blending sketching with a relaxed, social, and often humorous atmosphere. Morris said he saw an opening to build on enthusiasm already growing locally around informal group sketching.
“Everyone responded so enthusiastically to the SketchCrawls,” Morris said. “I thought we could expand on the idea, especially in a way that might appeal to more young people.”
A Coffeehouse as a Studio
Serda’s Coffee Company sits a few blocks south of Dauphin Street along the Royal Street corridor, an area of downtown Mobile that has steadily rebuilt itself around small businesses, restaurants and nightlife over the past decade. On a Friday evening the shop offers exactly what a sketch night needs: steady light, constant motion and a room full of people who are not posing.
For working artists, that motion is the draw. Drawing people who are moving — a barista mid-pour, a customer leaning over a laptop, a musician reaching for a microphone — is one of the most demanding exercises in figure sketching, and doing it in a coffee shop costs nothing compared with hiring models for a studio session. Several attendees worked the same way urban sketchers do in cities across the country, capturing quick gestures in a notebook and filling in detail later.
For amateurs, the barrier to entry was close to zero. There is no portfolio to submit and no supply list to buy; a pencil and a pad of paper are enough. Organizers noted that the casual setting helps first-timers who might feel intimidated walking into a formal class or a gallery event, because everyone in the room is drawing badly in public together, and that is accepted as part of the night.
The name itself, borrowed from the Los Angeles group that inspired Morris, signals the tone. The evening is built around conversation as much as drawing, with tables trading sketches between rounds of coffee. The live band that played that night gave sketchers a moving subject that would not sit still, and several said the music set a pace for their pages that a quiet studio never does.
Rooted in an International Sketching Movement
The Drink and Draw grew out of SketchCrawl, an international initiative in which groups of artists around the world sketch their own communities on set dates and later post the results online at sketchcrawl.com. The worldwide project treats drawing the way a running club treats a Saturday morning jog: on the appointed day, wherever participants happen to live, they head out together and record what they see.
Artist Val Webb introduced the concept to Mobile’s arts community the previous summer, and it took hold quickly enough that the local group has kept a regular schedule ever since. SketchCrawls tend to be organized around a route or a place, while the Drink and Draw is built around a single room — a difference that makes the coffeehouse version easier to repeat on short notice.
Since Webb brought the idea to town, local artists have held two organized SketchCrawls. The first wound through downtown Mobile in October, sending sketchers up and down the historic streets with pads in hand. The second took place in and around the Mobile Museum of Art in Langan Park, where participants could move between the galleries’ collection and the park’s grounds outside.
A third crawl was already on the calendar for Saturday, May 15, at Oakleigh, giving the group its first chance to sketch among the antebellum houses and gardens of the city’s best-known historic district. Results from the earlier crawls have been posted at mobilesketchcrawl.com, where residents can scroll through pages from the October and February outings side by side.
Why Sketching Together Works
Organizers say the appeal of both the SketchCrawls and the new Drink and Draw is the same: fresh, unpredictable subject matter, an informal and welcoming atmosphere, and the camaraderie that comes from creating alongside other artists. Drawing is usually a solitary habit, and many local artists spend their working hours alone at a desk or easel.
An evening like the Drink and Draw inverts that routine. Instead of guarding a half-finished canvas, artists hand pages across the table, compare approaches to the same subject and pick up techniques from one another without anyone lecturing. Beginners watch professionals simplify a scene; professionals, in turn, often say the unselfconscious shortcuts beginners take loosen up their own work.
The setting matters as much as the company. A coffeehouse on Royal Street places the group in the middle of the downtown scene the city has spent years cultivating, rather than behind the doors of a studio or classroom. Sketching the people around you also has a way of turning customers into an audience, and more than one attendee found strangers pausing to look over a shoulder and ask about the drawing.
The mobile sketching movement nationwide has grown on the same simple mechanics: pick a public place, show up, draw what is in front of you and share the results afterward. Mobile’s group now has both formats running — the scheduled crawls at fixed locations and the repeatable coffeehouse night — which gives artists of every schedule a way in.
A Handoff to the Artists Themselves
The events have so far been coordinated under the Mobile Arts Council, but organizers say they hope to eventually hand the reins to a looser, artist-led group in which anyone interested can step up to plan a future gathering. The council has served as the umbrella for the crawls since Webb launched the local branch, handling promotion and logistics through its downtown office.
The Mobile Arts Council has long functioned as the connective tissue of the city’s arts community, supporting member organizations, staging exhibitions and helping small artist-led projects find an audience. For the sketching group, that support meant a ready-made communication channel to local artists while the events found their footing.
Organizers see the artist-led model as the natural next step. Under it, no single person or agency owns the calendar; any artist who wants a session at a particular shop, park or gallery can call one and expect others to show up. The format’s low overhead — no fees, no permits for a gathering of sketchers in a private business, no equipment — makes that kind of distributed scheduling practical in a way it would not be for a staged event.
Morris has said the hope is that the looser structure will keep the momentum going and draw in more young people, who tend to respond to the social, low-pressure side of the format. The combination of live music, coffee and drawing has proven appealing to art students and hobbyists who might never attend a formal association meeting.
How to Get Involved
Those interested in future Drink and Draw sessions or SketchCrawl dates can contact the Mobile Arts Council at 251-432-9796, ext. 11, or by email at [email protected]. The council can add interested artists to the group’s notice list so they hear about the next session at Serda’s and the May 15 crawl at Oakleigh as dates are confirmed.
Participants do not need to register or pay anything to take part. Anyone who wants to prepare can bring a sketchbook, a few pencils or pens, and a folding stool if they prefer their own seat; the coffeehouse provides the rest, including the subject matter.
For downtown Mobile, the arrival of a recurring sketch night adds one more strand to the neighborhood’s cultural calendar, joining gallery walks, live music venues and the museum scene. Organizers describe the event as an experiment that worked on its first try: a room full of people drawing together, most of whom had never met before, promising to do it again.
With the third SketchCrawl set for Oakleigh in May and the Drink and Draw expected to continue at Serda’s, the city’s informal sketching community now has a standing rhythm. Whether it stays under the Arts Council umbrella or grows into a fully artist-run circle, the group’s founders say the plan is the same — keep filling pages, one coffee at a time.