This piece, as small as it is, was one of the more challenging of the NoLa series. It took over ten hours to get it to a place where it felt complete. I struggled mostly with keeping the overall feel to the piece loose and painterly; not so much like a photo, mostly all the people under the tented area of the cafe but you can also see some tightness in the tent itself as I had to repaint that a few times. Of course if you’ve been to New Orleans and Cafe Du Monde I couldn’t call this painting complete without adding some pigeons!

Fun Fact: I actually started two other pieces, “Pirate’s Alley” and “Adrian & Abby”, around the same time as this piece and finished both of them before completing “Cafe Du Monde”. Through all the struggle I finally managed to get it to a place that I felt happy with!