So apparently, the 29th of Sept is National Coffee Day in many parts of the world and October 1st is considered International Coffee Day. Well today is September 30th, so I figured I'd tell you all about the relationship between my art... and coffee!

Turns out instant coffee is a great painting medium if - like me - you enjoy splodgy gross brown stains and uneven textures in your art. Unlike tea, which is way better for staining, instant coffee can be made as thick as paste and settles in little globules, whilst real ground coffee will leave grainy specs everywhere. It's pretty cool for making textures.

This pair of skyscraper drawings are from my first year at uni, from around 2008-2009. The backgrounds are coffee.

This illustration featuring two magpie skulls from 2008 sometime also has a coffee background. This artwork is available as a print from my Etsy store!

I take photographs or make my own textures a lot. I keep them on my computer as stock for when I need a bit of grunge or something to add to digital illustrations. Sometimes it's just a photo of a wall, or some brush strokes or spodgy watercolour on paper, but here's a couple of my coffee textures!

The Problem - a book I collaborated on with a friend whilst at Uni, uses too many layers of found and made textures to count. Every page uses coffee somewhere, some more obviously than others.

With some of my works, I use a texture just to lift it a bit. Sometimes I'll end up erasing most of it out, leaving just a tint of colour or grain.

Even the background of my main homepage is a desaturated coffee texture. :)

Hope you've found this post somewhat interesting! Happy Coffee Day!