Artchipel

Hong Yi - Jay Chou Coffee Stain Portrait (2012)

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Artist Hong Yi aka Red who practices painting without a tradtional brush creates a portrait using coffee cup stains:

This project was inspired by the opening and closing lines in Jay Chou’s song, ‘Secret/不能说的秘密’. The opening line is about lifting a coffee cup off the saucer, “冷咖啡离开了杯垫” . The ending line of the song is about autumn leaves and fragmented pieces, “飘落后才发现 这幸福的碎片, 要我怎么捡?”. Hundreds of individual coffee stain rings, many of them broken and imperfect like fallen autumn leaves, form a whole portrait.

The project took about 12 hours to finish. Coffee is quite a challenging medium to use - too little water and the rings wouldn’t form easily, too much water and the rings would blend into each other, resulting in just a deformed pool of coffee. I had to also wait for the lighter parts too dry up before stamping on the darker rings, or else the rings would not be visible.

[found at prostheticknowledge]