Painting with Tea with Dara Gold

Dara Gold is an artist and illustrator located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I first found some of her pieces on Twitter and started to dig deeper to notice her creations painted with tea! After connecting with Dara she has shared with me three of her favourite pieces along with her process for each.

Fox Goddess

*The whole in progress series can be viewed on Dara’s Facebook page and website.
 I started this series by making large tea stains based off of reference photos of galaxies from our solar system. Once I finished the tea stains I started to think about what I wanted them to be. I really liked the idea of heavenly bodies and the zodiac, and eventually decided to create a pantheon of goddesses based on the stains. I didn’t plan the illustrations before hand. I had the idea in mind, and then stared really hard at the stains until an image took shape. The final illustrations are created freehand with ink. I’m really excited about this series, and the eventual accompanying print project that will go along with it.

Tea Owl

*The whole series can be viewed on Dara’s Facebook page and website.
I love animal portraits. I think that in general animal’s features lend themselves really well to the abstract and exaggerated shapes created by tea stains. I started this series by taking polls on various social media to figure out what animals people thought of as the cutest. Then I tested a variety of teas to figure out how to get the different colours for each animal. I really tried to give the final illustrations a lot of personality.

Secret Suit

This image, like most of my tea stains illustrations, had absolutely no planning. I stained paper with tea, and then free hand inked on top. The idea was totally inspired by the shape of the tea. I love starting with something abstract, and slowly but surely exacting more control with a free associative drawing process. I also adore drawing characters in suits.

Out of all of these wonderful tea creations, it’s hard for me to pick a favourite. If you’d like to get to know Dara Gold more, or check out the rest of her tea art and illustrations you can find her website here.

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