Garabateando@PR Coffee Expo 2011

Today we sketched at the Puerto Rico Coffee Expo, an event that is commemorating the 275th anniversary of the coffee industry in Puerto Rico.  It is being held at the PR Convention Center.  Tomorrow the organizers will be breaking the Guinness World Record for the biggest cup of coffee, which they were already brewing on several makers.  They will be serving 50 thousand cups of coffee!  It is a humongous cup, see the link.

A friend of mine is one of the organizers, so he welcomed us to attend.  I decided to give it a try to sketch with coffee, which I felt mandatory for the occasion.  Until late last night I hadn’t ever tried to do it, but hey, it’s all about enjoying the moment and having fun, so I did.

I knew I was going to get plenty of coffee there, but I wasn’t going to get an over-done, ink-like one, so I prepared one at home. I put it in the microwave to evaporate some of the water so it would yield me the darker tones. There at the expo I used some of my drinking coffee for the medium tones and clear water (with whatever coffee was still on the brush) for the lighter tones and let the paper do the highlights.  So I had at least 4 gradations which was good enough.

I sketched on Canson 140-lb watercolor paper, some at a 5″x7″ size and some at the Artist Trading Cards size, 2.5″x 3.5″.  I had never tried that size before, so it was all about experimentation today.  I did enjoy a lot the process, so I will be exploring the possibilities of the “medium”.  Watching people freak out when I licked the brush was priceless.  I did use a new brush, so no watercolor residues were ingested…

Here are some of my sketches today:

Batucada@PR Coffee Expo, 5"x7", Coffee on 140lb watercolor paper.

PR Coffee Expo, 3.5"x2.5", Coffee on watercolor paper

PR Coffee Expo, 3.5" x 2.5", Coffee on watercolor paper

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