Those that follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you will know that on Thursday afternoon, after my visit to The Grounds of Alexandria, I found myself at The Tea Salon in Westfield Pitt St Mall. A big day and it extended into the evening as well, so I needed a quiet moment for a cuppa. As you can tell from the annoying gutter on the left side of the sketch. this is part of a bigger spread that I will share on my Everyday Pages post on Monday, but today is all about enjoying a nice cup of Earl Grey tea with a fancy teacup and pot.

A few words on my process:
– As is my standard practice these days I started with the paint shape of the tea and then added the green of the cup leaving a white gap between the two. As I didn’t particularly want my ink to float all over the surface of the wet paint I had to wait till these were dry before adding the lines.
– The saucer had a very geometric pattern, but I was only wanting to indicate it, not draw it perfectly. So once again I put the paint down first so I could be looser but this time I encouraged some bleeding between my washes and the ink.
– For the teapot I started with the grey wash for the shaded areas. Once again I had to wait till that was dry till I added the floral pattern in ink and then paint.

It is this alternating between line and wash that I am loving these days.

The beauty of drawing teacups and pots is that once I have the tea shape done, I am free to drink my beverage while it is hot. The complexity of the subject matter lies in the cup and pot which can be completed at any time. Coffee is much harder as the difficult and time consuming part is the top surface. If I get carried away with that, my coffee will be cold. Hot coffee is something that I really like – I know the purist will say it should be drunk warm but I like it hot. So achieving a very quick representation of frothy coffee art is very important and this happens to be one of my current projects. Stay tuned for some sketches of this on Monday.

My FB and IG followers will also know that last week I made a BIG addition to my art tool collection and that this was its maiden tea cup sketch! I bought a Pilot Falcon from the wonderful Goulet Pens. More about this coming soon – I promise!

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