Since this time of year is quite food-centric, I thought it might be fun to encourage you all to play with your food….

If you’ve never seen the hundreds of Pinterest posts on it, milk painting with kids is actually pretty fun!  Put milk in bowls.  Add food coloring.  Let ’em paint on bread.  Toast & eat.  Easy peasy!

But I was also inspired awhile back by a fellow Instagram artist, who painted for fun with his morning coffee.  So one morning, Myla and I drew little faces on paper, and I graciously sacrificed a small portion of my own morning coffee to a little bowl, from which we painted.

Eventually, when the coffee dried a little, I tried adding some of her kid markers to the mix.  And since I remembered they’re washable, they had a sort of watercolor effect when wet, which was pretty fun to play with.

Myla added more as well…(she was really getting into this).

And (as we like to do) when I was finished, I handed over creative control of the drawing to Myla….who turned her into a lady centaur.

With a pink tail and a cane.  TaDAHHHHH!

I tried this coffee trick later on my own, on a portrait of Nick Cave I did for a friend.  I even threw a little coffee grounds into the mix, rubbing them into the paper, which gave it a bit of a gritty feel (although, admittedly maybe moreso if I didn’t love creamer so much).

Anyway, it smelled good.

Another day, we tried using our morning blueberries, adding a few kid markers again.  Those were the best!  The blueish-purple was pretty rich, and I wondered what other foods I could use.

I heard comments from people who said they’ve used strawberries, blackberries, mustard, ketchup, and candy.

I found a tutorial awhile back for doing chocolate portraits….which sounds pretty stinkin’ awesome!  …But I’m pretty sure I don’t have the patience for that.

(It WAS a pretty easy-looking tutorial, though….and now maybe I DO want to play with some chocolate.)

Anyway, WHATEVER you’re doing with food this season, I hope you have a little fun with it!