Robert Dawson
Homage to Coffee and Its Cups
Figure 6
BY ROBERT DAWSON
Web Developer, Artist, iPhoneographer
California, USA
(Had he moved to southern California, his abbreviated residential history would have served as a palindromic signifier of weltanschauung.)
0a Walk into a coffee shop.
0b Order a real cup of coffee. Yes, a real coffee, but I mean a real cup. Save a tree as well as your own aesthetic integrity.
0c With coffee in hand, add your preferred adornments, take a seat, and place the glistening elixir in front of you.
0d Grab an iOS device. For this painting, I chose my iPad.
1a Open a painting app. Here, I chose “Brushes” for iPad.
1b Pick a brush, any brush.
1c Squint and find three colors, representing the darkest, midrange, and lightest areas, respectively.
1d Block in each color from dark to light, filling the entire space.
1e Smile. You’ve just nailed your composition.
2 Frown. You forgot a color.
3b Take a moment to thank the incredibly selfless cup before you that is holding your scaldingly scrumptious coffee, acknowledging that you are both earthly vessels and that if you were made of porous clay, you would absorb the liquid into your own body without compunction.
4a Prove your thankfulness to the inanimate container by blocking in the coffee, adding vivid color to what was before a dreary scene.
4b Apologize to the cup for calling it dreary. You didn’t mean it. It’s just that surely you can both agree that coffee is exquisite.
5 Scribble in more detail and some floorboards. Don’t airbrush it or blend edges between values, pretending to be Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa. Don’t insult the subject by denying it its life-affirming energy. Scribble. Let each stroke exude exhilaration.
6a Conclude your homage with a splash of contrasting purple color over the cup’s previously dull shadow. This should make the cup feel better.
6b Now you can smile again.
