Josephine Ryan - Coffee Painting

I decided to look at some coffee painting artists as I came across some when looking at water colours and they look pretty similar except with colour differences due to one being painted only with coffee.

I found this artist I really like, Josephine Ryan who did a series of portraits painted with coffee.

This particular piece has elements of splattered coffee and drips which I might draw some inspiration from for my own posters as texture, using the artistic brushes in illustrator. The facial features of this piece are very detailed and close to a photo realism style, as the eye lashes and lines in the iris are very intricate and the shading on the lips are accurate to realism. She has also lightly used the splatter effect across the face of the portrait which creates the illusion of freckles.

This image is much darker in tone and the only space of white is her face, making it contrast against the darker background. She has used a lot of swirly elements do decorate the top and right side of the image like a border. The silhouettes of the butterfly and dragonfly are very intricate with the patterns in their wings. She has used a few splatters of coffee and added faint coffee rings, there is also much use of a stippling brush effect for most of the background.

This painting has a lighter tone than the previous one and uses the same swirly patterned elements as the darker one except they are inverted. I imagine her technique behind the white swirls was that she used masking fluid to paint the swirls on and then once dry she dripped and splattered coffee onto it, after the coffee dries the masking fluid can then be rubbed off creating the white swirls within the dark splashes of coffee. She has made much use of the coffee ring stain effect and the splatters from the background gently merge into the girl's hair.