Urban Sketches of Teens on a coffee stained page
Day Ninety of Sketching People
Day 90 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Urban sketching people at the cafe onto coffee-stained watercolour paper.
Urban Sketching at the Cafe on Coffee Stains
The other day I added some coffee circles to my sketchbook, but didn’t get around to sketching on these pages. So today when I went out to sketch at the cafe I had a ready-made background for my cafe sketches.
Not the best sketch, but I do like the concept of sketching on coffee stains. I also captured this stroppy teen who was sitting with her parents.
I really like the loose ink lines with both of these sketches. I wondered if there’s something about sketching on a messy background, that is encouraging a looser line?
So I spooned out a couple of splashes of my black coffee onto my page, and laid the book on the table for the sun to dry the coffee stains. Then when it had dried I sketched a pair of teens on the neighbouring table. Their parents were chatting, while the two teens were engrossed in their phones.
I like this messy coffee stain even better than the coffee rings. I’m not sure how I managed to get two layers of stains with a darker stain on top and the paler stain behind it. I only applied one layer, but I did swish it around a little.
I really like the really loose paint effect of the figure on the left. Her back kind of melts/fades away, which really helps to add a looseness to this sketch and supplements the loose background and loose ink lines.
Are there other Artists Using Coffee Stains?
I haven’t encountered other artists who use coffee stains creatively, but I knew I couldn’t be the only one, so I did a search to see what other urban sketchers incorporated coffee stained pages into their urban sketching habit.
Coffee stains and sketches – Koosje Koene | Draw Tip Tuesday
In this draw tip Tuesday video Koosje demonstrates how she makes rings and creates splashes at backgrounds to add ink drawings on top of.
I might have known Koosje has used this technique. She does a lot of sketching at cafes, and isn’t precious about her sketches. So this technique is really conducive to her approach to keeping a messy sketchbook.
