They say it takes 30 days to form a habit. Let’s see… maybe after a month of daily art I’ll keep at it and not take long unproductive breaks. Hope springs eternal.

Then again, with summer coming up and with it being the busy season on a tourist island, who knows…

Today I share a quick sketch of a hare looking startled to be featured on a blog. This time I got bored of working with boring ol’ pencil cause I can’t really smudge and work it with my fingers, and can’t get the depth of tones I’m used to with pastels or charcoal.

So, I started to wonder what I could use to give it that extra dimension, given I’d already donated the crappy acrylics to some underage budding artists, and had no other art supplies on hand.

I found tea bags. Handy as a beverage and an art material.

Never one to knock back the chance to work with tea (having stained my share of fabrics and doilies with it) I decided to give it a go. Thing I discovered about using tea as an ink is that tea gets darker as it dries, so bits I thought looked too pale and went over ended up a little darker than expected.

Still, I rather like the effect. Art meets clumsy tea drinker.

Meanwhile I thought I’d give coffee a go as well. Since we don’t have any instant coffee at home in Athens (my go-to for coffee staining) I asked mom to make me a greek coffee to paint. She thought I was going to paint the coffee cup and even put it in a nice cup with matching saucer. Instead, I dipped my brush into it and added a bit of dimension to the donkey I drew on Day 1.

Its a totally different colour and unlike the tea, it doesn’t darken as it dries. Its more of a WYSIWYG medium.

(‘What you see is what you get’ for those unfamiliar with the old fashioned graphic design term. Pronounced wiz-ee-wig.)

I got my new acrylics today but not sure if I’ll jump right in or if I’ll play with tea a little longer.

Depends on how many black tea mom has.

I’m also eyeing off her red wine…

z