Mixed Media Sketching Tuesday!

Last week I had a wonderful afternoon, drinking tea and sketching and painting with my friends!
I was supposed to stop by just for a while, and didn't bring much material with me, only and old book and some white gouache. While chatting and sipping on the tea, I started to partially cover  the book pages with the white paint... I really didn't have any idea of what I was going to do...

 Since I didn't have any watercolors with me I then used the different teas on the paper for some abstract designs for warming up, and finished with some watercolor pencils...

Now I was inspired enough to end up with some small and loose mixed media sketches of coffee and tea cups! I really enjoyed improvisating and sketching in good company, and I was quite happy with the result as well, even if these are no traditional watercolor paintings -  what do you think?!

Caffè espresso!

I have been really busy lately, and had a hard time to find time to paint. Luckily I always get so inspired by Lela's blog Paint and Draw Together -link  here ! This time I didn't paint the suggested picture, but was inspired to paint all my different cups of espresso coffee!

This was absolutely fun - first of all, usually I do much larger paintings, (except for my recent small landscapes) while these are small, like the real cups. This means they were very fast  to paint, which was important these days. 

As you see, on some of these sketches I added some details in carbon or pencil. 

I really think I'll work more with this subject, I have some cups with pattern as well...

This was the first sketch, and actually the one I like most, I think it's more fresh and expressive than the others. This happens often, since when I sketch I feel free, while when I start a 'real' painting I maybe try too hard!? Does this happen to you as well?