Last week I started a new project: Sketching my way through my teacup collection. The idea is to drink out of a different teacup each week and to do a sketch of it. I just realised that it will be 10 years in February from when I started in earnest to regularly sketch teacups so it’s very appropriate timing.

Here are the first two.

Teacup #1: Starting to buy teacups

This teacup – 1950s Festival, part of The Royal Albert 100 years set –  was the cup that started my collecting.

I had been given a few cups before this, but this is the one that started my personal buying of cups. I really like drinking out of this cup as it has a lovely combination of blue and white. However from the standard ‘liz sketching view’ while drinking tea, it looks a little plain.

So I did a elevational view as well. It’s a bit of a subdued start to my project, but there is some nice merging of washes and watercolour magic in it.

Teacup #2: My favourite cup shape

This green teacup is the first one which I bought from T2 – a brand of teashops in Australia which has made tea drinking very cool. They also had two tearooms for a number of years, one at Macquarie Centre and one at Hornsby. I used to hang out in the Macquarie one a lot and was very sad when it closed in 2013. More about the tearoom here.

I bought this cup just before a trip to Wales in 2009 so the fact it is green was topical at the time. It has a gorgeous cup shape – my favourite of all my teacups. Sadly it got a chip so I stopped using it. However, it’s been fun to drink out of it this week despite the chip. It’s not fine bone china, so I need to warm the cup well before use. Note: I am very fussy these days and try to only buy fine bone china cups.