Here was a wonderful opportunity to combine various things that I love: Watercolors, Coffee, and Croissants!

My mother often spoke to me and my sister about how she started drinking hot coffee at age six. She grew up in Georgia. Call it fate, kismet, or whatever you like, but she introduced me to the enticing taste of coffee at a pretty early age. In my case, it was “coffee milk” (cooled coffee with milk and sugar), and also coffee ice cream. Any way you look at it the dye was cast. To this day I absolutely adore my coffee.

Given my coffee enthusiasm – plus my love of visual art – it was only a matter of time before I would want to find ways of combining these two things. And, of course, watercolor seemed a great medium to pursue!

As luck would have it I found two relevant classes offered at Skillshare:

Fun and Easy Watercolors: Draw a Beautiful Coffee Illustration by
Mariya Popandopulo

Fun and Easy Watercolors: Drawing Cookies and Pastry by
Mariya Popandopulo

These classes were very helpful and quite enjoyable, and I recommend them both. But I should point out that there is no shortage of other great classes and tutorials available out there on how to paint with watercolors. Check out other classes and video tutorials at Skillshare.com, Lynda.com, YouTube, etc.

MATERIALS USED:

PAPER

Canson Watercolor Cold Press Paper (140 lb, 11 x 15″ )

WATERCOLOR PAINTS (a variety of Browns, Reds, and Yellows)

Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolors:
Raw Sienna
Cadmium Orange
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber

Pentel Watercolors:
Ultramarine
Yellow Ochre

Reeves Watercolors:
Deep Yellow
Red Ochre

INK

Sakura Pigma Micron Pen (01) in Black (for the bubbles)

A practice exercise in the first class involved exploring different watercolor techniques to illustrate different looks for coffee. The image below shows my results:

The techniques which were used in the exploration excercise included variations on wet on wet, wet on dry, single color, and incorporating multiple colors. The bubbles were done in black pigma micron ink. The shading was achieved by using mixing colors to create a blue-gray.

In addition to painting likenesses of cups of coffee, I also practiced painting croissants. Fortunately these pastries are fairly easy to draw, and the coloring was achieved by glazing different colors over one another.

Here is my final result.

All in all I am very happy with how my painting turned out. Looking forward to creating other similar works in the future!