M
any of us suffer from a little thing known as coffee
hyperbole. It’s most commonly used during those
trying times of the day, when a hot cup of
percolated caffeine is deemed a ‘lifesaver’. For 42-year-old
artist Wil Freeborn however, such claims are no
exaggeration: coffee has quite literally changed his life.
Just a few years ago, Wil worked as a designer for BBC
Scotland and sketched for fun. He has always been one of
life’s great observers, frequently found in the corner of a
Glasgow café, quietly drawing the staff and customers with
his Platinum Carbon Pen in a favoured Stillman & Birn
sketchbook. As his confidence grew, he began posting
drawings of his commute to work on the image-sharing
website Flickr. Online followers warmed to his unusual style:
urban sketches with a considered approach to figure and
form, which he would later render in watercolour.
Wil’s favourite Glaswegian coffee shops became a
feature of his artwork and commission requests soon
followed. In 2014, he was asked by the Glasgow Coffee
Festival to illustrate a ‘coffee calendar’ of the city’s
best-loved cafés. The response was overwhelmingly
positive and the opportunities just kept coming, including
an artist’s residency on the Isle of Skye. Eventually the
illustration work became lucrative enough that he was
able to focus on his art full time.
Wil continues to post his work online most days, though
he’s since turned his attentions to Instagram, a popular
photo-sharing social network through which he has found
an international community that can relate to his
watercolours, many of whom have never stepped foot
in Scotland, let alone George Square.
Keen to learn more, we headed to Glasgow to meet
Wil in his natural habitat: Avenue Coffee on Great Western
Road. As we sit outside waiting for a seat indoors, teeth
chattering over flat whites in the razor-sharp ScottishWIL FREEBORN’S DETAILED WATERCOLOURS
CELEBRATE THE QUIET COMMUNITY OF SCOTTISH
COFFEE HOUSES, BUT AS HE TELLS KATIE MCCABE,
IT’S TIME FOR HIS ART TO START MAKING SOME NOISELEFT Papercup,
watercolour on
sketchbook,
26x21cmCafé
culture
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Artists & Illustrators 1918 Wil Freeborn.indd 19 18/02/2016 14: