Watercoloring Coffee Cups

 This week the Watercoloring Wednesday team is taking a look at a tutorial video from Debby Hughes that has a tip included with it. And although her video links to this blog tutorial here from Anthony Roebuck and I thought I read you could download something maybe something to trace to use an overhead cup with a spoon in the set, what I did was started poking around in my Coffee stamps collection for ones that were overhead views to save some time. You can click on any of these photos to enlarge them and hit your browsers back button to continue reading.

A glimpse of how they all turned out together. I really used all those brushes, some with paint some with water. I had a month or two ago taken some of my duplicate sized brushes to work for when there is down time there so being at home I did not have that many duplicate sizes but, they were "close enough" 

So I started by digging out this Stamplorations Holiday Mocha feels set because, I knew that it had a big cup which meant more space to paint in. And my main thing with painting along with it was to focus on the shadows and where I thought the light would hit. 

So, I am painting along with this and I keep looking down into the cup thinking you have no bubbles. ( even black coffee bubbles along the rim when you first pour it) so, I had the bright idea to grab my container of table salt and sprinkle some on. ( it was too dry or too small because, you really could not see any texture or resist spaces when it was dry) So, then I started doing some white gouache and eventually on the finished piece some white gel pen and stardust gelly roll pen in that same area where you see salt here. (it didn't really look like bubbles but, it didn't look horrible either) 

So then I decided to start painting some smaller overhead view cups I have from the Ton in their hug in a mug set. I did not start out with this one because, I figured it would be harder to do being a smaller set. and also this is a mug view ( what I would see in reality as I drink coffee from mugs not cups with saucers with spoons on them kwim?) So, I stamped this one off twice on some scraps thinking they may work on tags or something with Simon Says Stamp barely beige on Arches cold press 100% cotton paper. These were all taped down to the back piece of old used up Strathmore watercolor pads. ( I saved the backs to paint on) 

So at this point I was thinking something is missing and I finally remembered the coffee spill rings. ( I don't actually ever see this on my desk ( coffee rings) so, its always something that looks cool on people's art and another one of those things where it is being done just for extra texture from me. So, remembering what Debby said about her hero arts water mister bottle ( which happens to hide on my rack of distress pads behind this glass mat you see, I did end up painting some of the brown onto the bottom of the bottle to get rings for the ton cups but, the one with the flowers and coffee beans I figured spills of coffee rings would just be too distracting and I skipped that part on that panel. 

A closer look at that, when the tape came off, the edges of the cup rings had mostly been on the tape so, I ended up doing a few more with no tape on the panels. the one on the left the May Arts ruffled ribbon is taped to the back side of the painted panel and is up on foam tape, there is also a smidge amount of Nuvo Carmel cream drops on this in the splatters part of the card. The one on the right I tied a piece of brown bag fibers around the end at it was a really abrupt edge when that tape came off and this softens it to me. 

These are both A2 in real life on some Neenah earthstone coversheet. I did cut the painted panels with a Spellbinders deckle edge rectangle die. I used Daniel Smith paints on all of these cups and a little bit of Windsor & Newton white Gouache on the cup with the latte pattern and some splatters. Which I think got a little flatter when they ran through the big shot to be cut. 

This silly sentiment from Riley & Co. I think works with all those spill rings so, it is actually glued to the inside of this card. 

A closer look at the painting of the Christmas cup. I did eventually add some Polychromos pencil to some petals of this bloom and those branch things tucked in around it. and the seams of the beans. 

The printed paper on this one is from American Crafts, all these panels were cut with a Hero Arts rounded rectangle dies and This one finished out at A7 in real life. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us, thanks for stopping by.