Cup Full of Stars - Project Media: Tea and Coffee Illustration

This is my illustration for this month's Project Media theme of tea and coffee! The media I used included Crayola colored pencils, colored pencils from a coloring book, Gelly Roll white gel pens, and a Pilot brand fine-tip pen. I think colored pencils and graphite pencils are the two drawing utensils I've used the most, so I believe I have a decent amount of experience with them.

The initial concept for this piece was to draw a still-life drawing of one of my favorite mugs, as I figured it would make for a simple realism practice that also fit the theme. It was only during the last stretch of the design process that I decided to add the "starlight tea" to make the piece more interesting and visually appealing.

I started by getting out a sketchbook, my mug for reference, and all the colored pencils that I thought I would need.

I started by drawing a light outline of the mug with a yellow pencil. Part of the decision to use a yellow pencil was because I was always taught to work "from light to dark" and that "outlines make a picture look flat," so the light outline would be easy to conceal later on when I added shading and details. I drew the main parts of the mug: the cup, the rim, the orange band on the reference mug, and the handle. These were all basic shapes that made it easier to guide my drawing. As you can see, it's pretty difficult to see the outline in the picture below.

After that, I began filling in some of the colors with light strokes. For the small strips of color on the top, I did my best to make them similar in width to the original mug. I tried to leave gaps in the color for where the highlights should be, and I blended some colors to compensate for the colors I didn't have.

Eventually, I realized I lacked too many colors. So I ended up going to the store halfway through haha. The new pencils gave me more options for color blending and also made it easier to match the colors to the real subject.

I continued to fill in the base colors, doing my best to balance blending and accuracy to the actual piece. This gave me a good idea of what colors went where, along with how much contrast I'd need between the highlights and the shading.

Now that I knew where all the colors went, I felt more comfortable about shading. I began to darken my colors where there were shadows, and I carefully avoided areas that were brighter or had highlights. I also tried to use a grayish pencil to color in the white parts of the mug that weren't the result of highlights. I used a mix of different pencils for some of the colors (i.e. sky blue and a darker blue) to give the colors a bit more "pop." This helped compensate for my lack of color variety, since the new box I bought didn't have some of the colors I was looking for (i.e. the reddish strips near the top of the mug were a mix of red, dark red, light brown, and pink). I'm glad I made the choice to blend colors because I feel like it added more depth to some of the colors.

During this step, I also colored in the handle. You might notice that the handle in my drawing is brown with an orange splotch, while the real handle is white with an orange splotch. The reason for this is similar to when I colored in the white strips on the mug. While the mug handle would be white, the lighting made that untrue (because the highlights/brightest parts are the only true whites). Originally, I tried to use a gray pencil, but it didn't turn out so well. The shape and shadows of a mug were more difficult to portray than I thought! I had a limited variety of gray that didn't match the shadows, so I made the mug handle brown instead. I followed the original shading to the best of my ability while using a different color from the original! While I would've preferred to make the piece representative of the real mug, I think it was an interesting challenge to make it a different color and it helped me practice the concept of value and color theory.

This was the point where I decided to draw stars in the cup rather than drawing the inside of the real mug. I still lacked the proper gray colors to accurately portray the "blank" parts of the mug! Since I have an obsession with stars, I gave myself the option of either drawing a) steaming tea, where the steam would be replaced with a drawing of starry ethereal skies, or b) starlight tea. Since I already drew an orange rim around the cup, I thought it would be difficult to do the steam option. I also would've had to figure out what drink to draw inside, and normal drinks usually don't fill the cup to the brim, so I would still have the issue of drawing the inner mug. In the end, I made starlight tea (although I'm sure you could already tell from the pictures).

I didn't really take progress pictures for this part, so I'll just narrate. I filled the blank part of the mug with a sky blue base, then layered it with some teal on the outer rims and violet and navy blue closer to the front/center part of the cup. This took a lot of blending to give the colors a natural transition. After I was satisfied with that, I brought out my white gel pens and began drawing stars. I kind of wish I didn't put the sparkle-type stars in there because they made the piece look less realistic, but I still think they add to the starry aesthetic.

I also began to use the gel pen to place highlights around the rim of the mug. After that, I added more shadows in spots that I thought were lacking because I wanted to place more emphasis on the depth of the mug. I was aiming for realism!

At the tail end, I added the "starlight tea" tag because I wanted to make an indication that this was still meant to be a cup of tea. I regret using a black pen on the tag, since it was really dark and bold and stands out from the rest of the piece. It doesn't feel immersive, as if it was part of the picture. I think in the future, I'd use a colored pencil instead.

And here's the final piece! I haven't dabbled into realism as much as I would like, so this was a very fun and interesting practice! I think it was fun to use a mix of realism and fantasy. I'm proud of the shading of the left five color strips on the cup, since I think they have a lot of depth and look decently realistic, but I think the rest of the strips look flat! I think I needed to leave the right-most side a little lighter so that the mug would be less two-toned. I needed more contrast there. Aside from that, I also like how clean the outline of the piece is! Something I noticed in a lot of realism pieces is that clean outlines make the piece more realistic (and more clean in general). Overall, I think I achieved my goal of making a visually appealing cup of starlight tea.

Thank you for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even learned from it! If you thought it was interesting, maybe you could check out some of my other Project Media posts, where I focus on the process behind each of my pieces. Last week I posted a short story, and next week I'll be posting a free crochet pattern for an adorable kittea cup! I hope to see you there!

Have a splendiferous day!

- Jonalie <3