Cup of Coffee Watercolor Tutorial // New Ko-fi Page

Hi guys, this is Nia, and today I'll be painting a cup of coffee, and to start the tutorial I always like to begin by sketching out the subject first to get myself acquainted. When I tackle drawing cups, I always like to start with an oval, and like the bubble tea tutorial that I've posted before, depending on how wide or thin the oval is, it's going to determine the angle of the painting. So the flatter the oval looks, the more off the side of the cup you're going to be able to see, and the rounder the oval means you're looking from a higher perspective, so you're going to see less off the sides of the cup. I've also drawn out a line in the middle because I always find it hard to draw mirror images, so it's just really useful to have an indication of the center so it's easier to figure out the accuracy of both sides. The model of the cup is really up to you though, you can either create a simple straight one, rounded, or even curved and ornamental. The handle however is a little bit more tricky because there's a bit of foreshortening happening, so putting it right at the side would be the easiest way. Also if you do want to draw it a little bit angled, make sure that the handle is facing the center of the cup so it doesn't look wonky, and you can measure this by just drawing out a line that is directed to the center of the cup. Feel free to also add a saucer below the cup for added elements, but if you're new to drawing, I think it helps to practice drawing accurate ovals first because I think that's probably the hardest part of the drawing, at least in my opinion, to get the perfect oval that is even on both sides. So for this one, I'm going to draw the outline with pencil first to make the painting much easier to tackle, and meanwhile I want to announce that I recently made a Ko-fi account, which is why I've decided to paint a cup of coffee today. If you guys don't know, Ko-fi is like a tip jar for creators. It's similar to Patreon, but there is no need for monthly subscriptions, even though that is an option if I were to upgrade my account, and we'll just see if there is enough interest, and if I am able to afford the upgraded account, I will take it into consideration because they do have other features, like I can post things exclusively for followers, but I just want to give it a try for now. I've had people ask me in the past if I have a Patreon account, and with my small following and Patreon having cuts and fees and not that great paying method for my country, I just didn't feel like it was the right fit for me, so I decided to look for another platform and I found Ko-fi. This isn't anything mandatory though, and I hope no one feels pressured to donate or anything. I will still be making tutorial videos that is free and available for everyone to watch, but I'm just letting you guys know that from now on, if you guys like my content and tutorials and is interested in supporting me in a different form rather than from views, the link is now there. I'll leave it at the description box starting from this video and future videos, so you can go there whenever you feel like it. So getting back to the tutorial, I'm also going to draw a section of the coffee froth with a section of highlights on both sides drawn very thinly, and I'm also going to add some coffee beans for added decoration on the saucer, or you can also add sugar cubes and or teaspoons if you would like to. For the coffee beans though, I basically just drew ovals and then added a curved line on the side depending on where I want the coffee beans to face. Then at the flat surface, I'm going to add a line in the middle. For the colors, I'm going to start with some burnt umber, ivory black, and mineral violet. So firstly, I'm going to mix ivory black and burnt umber together to create a dark brown. Then to bring about some more vibrancy to the brown, I'm also going to add some mineral violet in the mix, and I'm going to place this on the right side of the cup, which for me is going to be the non-frothy section. I'm first going in with a medium consistency, and then on the right hand side, I'm also going to leave out a thin line for a little bit of light reflection on the coffee. Once that section of the painting is dry, I made a slightly thicker consistency paint to place it on top of the same section, but this time I want to leave out a line along the left side where it's separated from the frothy section. I accidentally went over the area that I'm not supposed to, so I'm just going to fix that by erasing it with a slightly damp brush, and then absorbing the paint with my brush. Then I want to continue on with an even thicker consistency to paint a thick outline along the side near the rim. The top part of the coffee is slightly wet, so I'm not going to be able to layer at the moment, so I'm just going to wait for that to dry by starting to paint the frothy area, and I'm first going to use some burnt umber by itself for a lighter brown colour, and I'm going to do a light wash for that whole area. Then I used burnt umber along with a new colour that I'm adding to the palette, which is cadmium orange, and I'm going to use this to glaze the first base colour to get a rich caramel colour. Then while the paint is still slightly wet, I added more burnt umber in the mix and placed it in the middle of the frothy section, and if the paint is spreading too much like mine, I just use a dry brush to pick up the excess and clean the edges slightly. Then once the right part of the coffee is dry, I added the same mixture of black, mineral violet, and burnt umber from before, but it felt like the whole area is looking a little bit too dull, so I ended up adding another glaze with this colour. Next, I'm going to paint the base colour of the coffee beans, and to do that, I just added some burnt umber into the previous mix, so the brown isn't as dark anymore. Then I used to paint the coffee beans very roughly whilst leaving some edges of the beans with a white negative space, so it doesn't end up looking like a totally flat surface, but separated beans. By now, the top part of the coffee should be dry, so I used a very thick consistency of the same mix from before to now outline the right side near the rim. Then I softened the top part to blend with the rest of the area. Next, I used a mixture of cadmium orange and burnt umber again, and I used this to repaint the middle of the frothy section. I only paint one side, and on the right side, I blend it with the base colour to create a really nice natural gradient, and now I'm just going to leave this to dry and move on to the coffee beans. So now I'm just going to layer the coffee beans by using a mixture of black, mineral violet, and burnt umber again, and here I switch to my small brush, which is a size zero, to paint some of the sides of the beans, and we're defining some of the shapes. Be mindful to leave lots of small negative spaces in order to give the beans a little bit of texture. I do try to leave out some areas lighter than the rest if I feel like that's where the light is coming from. I also use the lighter colour to separate the beans. However, if you overpaint, like in some parts of my painting, I just used a damp brush again to pick up some of the excess paint to separate if an area is looking a little bit too flat, in case you forget to leave some white spaces like I did. Next is my favourite part to paint, which is the froth. I love painting little details like this because they are actually super simple, even though it might look complicated. So first, I want to create a thick consistency of the coffee colour, and I try to make it as similar as possible with the one on the right hand side. The colours again are black, mineral violet, and burnt umber. Then I'm just going to paint small bubbles with tiny highlights on the side, and I'm going to scatter this around and also play with the size. You want to vary this from the larger circles, like the ones that I am drawing right now, to very small dots, but I like to personally tackle some of the larger ones first to fill in more of the space. When I paint this, I want to make sure that not all of the large ones are placed close together, because it might look a little bit odd and out of place, but instead, I like to place smaller ones too near the larger bubbles. And just as a tip, to give an illusion of softer bubbles or froth, you can use a lighter consistency to create the dots. Basically, the lighter the paint, the softer the texture is going to be. So I'm just going to speed this part up, because I'm just going to repeat the same thing until I fill up that whole section of the coffee. So here, I've got some froth that is looking a little bit too light, and it doesn't look cohesive with the rest of the froth, so I'm going to layer a darker tone until I feel like the overall value is similar to the rest of the froth. To finish off the coffee, I just add a little bit of definition to separate the froth by just adding more dark brown to lightly outline the separation. Then once I'm quite happy with the coffee, I'm going to move on to painting the cup. And for this, I'm going to start with ivory black, but I'm also going to add a new color to my palette again, which is ultramarine violet. But thinking about it again, I would actually prefer to add something like manganese blue, which is a brighter type of blue, so you might want to change up the grey when you paint your own cup. The first thing that I decided to paint is the inside of the cup as well as the handle, because I think they're the most straightforward to paint. I just add a darker tone to the parts in shadow and a lighter tone next to it. I always like to start with a thin coat at the beginning, because I want to just check how it looks, so I can always fix it in case I'm not satisfied. But once I'm happy with the placement of value, I just add a darker glaze, but always be careful to not overwork it, because to paint white, you need to be very light-handed with your washes, or else your eyes won't be able to adjust that the cup is supposed to be light, if the color you chose is a little bit too dark. For the side of the cup, I just basically made up a random reflection. You can turn this into anything you want, but make sure to keep the color nice and light, and always build up very carefully. The one tip for this is to always be mindful of the curvature and contour of the cup, and use lines which can help define the roundness. So I always try to avoid painting straight lines, because it flattens it, and when I do paint curved lines, I try to always follow the curvature instead of painting them the opposite direction. So my top priority that I think about is always to paint the abstract shapes to enhance the curves of the cup. I also try to leave a fair bit of white, because I think it gives a nice glossy finish to the surface of the cup. On top of that, I think that it also lightens the color, which then would help your eyes to adjust to the fact that the cup is white in color. I like to also add some shadows from the coffee beans by adding a bit of the coffee bean color to create the shadow, and once I've mapped out all of the reflection, I like to enhance parts of the reflection so it doesn't look flat, and to add a little more detail, because chances are reflections are not going to only have one flat color. So in addition to painting the sides, I also like to add some lines to give some detail to the reflection, but I just want to keep this simple still, and not to add too many lines, or it might make the cup look like it has a weird design. I'm going to stop painting the cup for the moment, and I'm going to move on to the saucer, and do the same by adding shadows and some reflections, and at this point, I want to be able to balance the color with the cup. When I'm painting this, I want to make sure I have clean edges, which can suggest the shape of the dips and the rim, so for those areas, I want to increase the value to give contrast to the parts in a slightly higher position. I want to make sure that each element of the cup, the handle, and the saucer is visible, so where those elements are touching, I'm going to increase the contrast of those edges too. After that, I also decided to paint the cast shadows darker than the rest by glazing it with more ivory black, and I thought I was finished at this point, but when I looked at it again, I felt like I needed to redefine more of the edges, so I slightly outlined some edges with my small brush to get a very thin line, but I don't want it to look too thick, or else it might look a little bit cartoony, and I also forgot to film this specific part, but I actually took some white gouache to paint some white specks of highlight on the bubbles and some of the froth, and I think that this makes a huge difference in making your painting come to life, so don't forget to paint that part, and then I give it one final look again and give some final adjustments, and I think I can call this one done. This was an unexpected one for me to paint, but I actually ended up liking the process of painting this one a lot, especially the froth, and I think I also learned a few new and hopefully you've picked up on those too. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, thank you so much for watching until the end, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!