Coffee Art

There is some real cool art done with coffee. Coffee art is a real cool technique and not everybody is perfect at it. There are some interesting designs which can be made with coffee. Artists have been using coffee as washes for sketches and other shading for some time now. Many such artists consider coffee as an interesting medium to create art.

As early as 1993 some of artist's novel coffee art inventions were making the front covers of major coffee magazines in the United States. The credit for the first art design with the help of coffee goes to, though heavily debated, Saul Bolanos.

American artists, Andy Saur and Angel Sarkela have been creating art with coffee since the past 3 or more years. For them, coffee has become the artistic medium. The reason why they started painting with coffee is an interesting one. They were preparing for an art show in a coffee house and they wanted to do something unique. Thus, they experimented with coffee, initially used coffee beans but failed, and then they used coffee as a watercolor and they succeeded.

The number one mistake that most people and journalist make is to assume that there is one single coffee art process for making the great variety of coffee art forms offered by the artist. That is very far from the truth. It is impossible to use the same coffee process for making coffee images for example on glazed ceramics, and to use it also for making coffee art on stones or spoons.  Each challenge is plagued with a legion of technical difficulties that only time and indefatigable perseverance can resolve. Most of the time success comes only after many years of failure. Thus, we see that coffee art is a difficult process to master.

Coffee art is more than just artistry; it is creativity plus art. You need to be very creative to produce art with coffee. You will make a lot of mistakes before you hit the right spot. This was the way coffee artists learnt their lessons. They realized that using coffee as a watercolor was the most effective way. The artist will first sketch out an idea, then start brewing a really strong pot of coffee that is really dark and thick! From there, water is added to gain the subtle tones of brown. Finally, a clear coat of acrylic is added to preserve the art and a painting of delicate beauty is finished.

For artists, working with coffee is a unique and satisfying experience. Being such a unique medium, coffee art catches people off guard. Their reaction is a one of complete amazement and surprise when they are informed that the work they are viewing has been made with coffee. Coffee art shows that artists can still be creative and only sky is the limit as far as artists are concerned. You have to see these forms of art to believe the creativity of the artists.