As COVID tightened its evil grip on our beautiful city and the weight of it all started sinking in, I clung to my sketching habit—still drawing the locals without mouths, albeit from a safe distance.

Some made the coffee, some drank it. Some rushed in and out, while others (like me) lingered, soaking in their surroundings. Occasionally, I’d catch their names when the barista asked for them, jotting them down along with their coffee order—a little detail to help me remember who they were, or at least what they drank.

Each day I’d sit and sketch, sometimes I’d snap it and stick it on Instagram Stories, and about once a week I’d convert some of them in Pro-Create into something more polished. Here are a few of those second-generation portraits, drawn over the course of about a year.