Learn to Paint With Coffee!

So you are feeling like breaking the brushes out, but you’ve no paint? Use what you have on hand! Coffee! Look, I have to admit… if you’re a green tea drinker, I can’t help you this time. Try ketchup and let me know how it turns out. 

Still here? Let me tell you a story about the first time I heard of coffee as a medium with which to paint. I was working in a frame shop and a client came in with a really talented painting of a deer in sepia tones on watercolor paper. We selected our mats and frame and I was putting the order in the computer, I noticed the darkest areas had a sort of sheen I wasn’t used to seeing with watercolors. I pointed this out and asked.

“Yes!! Good eye! My brother lives in Alaska and isn’t always able to get paint where he lives…” she started. These were the days before Amazon came along. “So,” she continued, ” he started using varying strengths of coffee!”

I loved the sheer resourcefulness of it! Sure, it’s acidic as heck and will age poorly in the wrong conditions, but the same can be said of walnut ink, Leonardo Da Vinci’s default medium. Rembrandt too! The lesson has stuck with me ever since. Look around.

Below are two short introductions to painting with coffee.