Painting With Coffee
I’m going to share the story of how I started painting with coffee and how these coffee phrase paintings and prints came about. I also want to tell you about what it’s like painting with coffee, compared to watercolor.
How did I start painting with coffee?
I’ve seen other artists use coffee for painting and was curious to try it. I asked my local coffee shop, Haymarket Coffee Company, if they had any used grounds I could use for painting. You don’t need fresh grounds for this, since used grounds still have enough in them to give you the color you need and the condition of the grounds doesn’t matter much as you won’t be drinking it.
As luck would have it, a customer had recently returned a bag of coffee. This was the second time in the coffee company’s history that a customer had returned a bag. The bag was returned because the grid they got ended up not being quite right for their coffee machine at home. Since the returned coffee couldn’t be resold, it ended up going home with me for painting.
Picture of the famous returned bag of coffee from Haymarket Coffee Company
A bag goes a long way, so I’m still using this returned bag of Tazumal from Haymarket Coffee Company for my coffee paintings. This coffee is way fancier than what I need for painting, but it was free for me and we kept some returned coffee from going to waste.
Eventually I am going to run out and I’ll need another customer to return a bag!
Why coffee phrases?
I felt like it would be the most fun to paint coffee things with coffee. I started with some paintings of coffee cups and coffee berries. But I also wanted to do something a little more fun. There are a lot of fun coffee sayings out there, so I thought it would be great to take those and then take it a step further by actually painting these coffee sayings with coffee. I made a list of coffee sayings I liked, and worked on the layout of the words for each, and then set down to painting.
One of the coffee phrases that I’ve painted. The brown parts are painted solely with coffee, while the grey of the cup is painted with Holbein watercolor paint. This painting is available as a print in my shop.
On each of these, the words and the coffee and painted solely with coffee. In many of the paintings, I used watercolor to paint the grey of the shadows of the cup as I wanted that grey color to really make the coffee pop.
If you love coffee, I hope you enjoy these coffee prints. I’m hoping that using actual coffee in these paintings helps bring a little extra coffee character to them.
How do I prepare coffee for painting?
Even coffee that is very dark in the cup is light once on the paper. For painting, coffee needs to be extremely strong. I’ve seen different methods of preparing coffee for painting. Some people prefer to use instant coffee since it dissolves well and gives a strong mixture. I’ve prepared coffee in a variety of ways. My goal is to get a really strong cup of coffee. I use a lot of coffee grinds and just enough water to cover them. I’ve tried brewing hot coffee as well as brewing it as a cold brew for a few days. Either way didn’t seem to matter much for me to get a darker color. What I’ve found helps me get a stronger color is taking the strongly brewed coffee and then boiling it down. I will boil it down to about a quarter of the volume.
A mason jar with prepared coffee and the small pot I use to boil down the coffee to the concentration I’m looking for.
Just FYI, brewed coffee smells wonderful but when you are boiling down coffee for painting it smells like burnt and it’s awful.
What’s it like painting with coffee?
Painting with coffee is like painting with watercolor, but there are significant differences. It behaves differently and this makes some aspects of painting easier but most aspects harder. Coffee lifts much easier off the paper than most watercolor paints, so layering can be challenging. It’s also difficult to blend and to do wet on wet techniques as everything just seems to blend out evenly. And any bit of layering causes very strong blooms.
On the positive side, the color of coffee is wonderful and it lends to a really beautiful looking painting. When just trying to do an even wash, like when I’m filling in a letter in a word, I end up with a lot of natural variation and character. The coffee does a lot of work on its own. And since it lifts really easy, it’s possible to get some interesting textures just by going over parts of the painting with water.
It can be frustrating, but it’s important to remember that it’s not watercolor paint. You have to work with its strengths and weaknesses.
See More
If you are interested in seeing more of my coffee paintings, check out the coffee prints available in my shop.