A Cup of Creativity Challenge!

My last challenge (The CCC - The Crayon Creation Challenge) turned out to be a load of fun and produced some unbelievable artworks!  I thought it was time to do a new challenge.  From the poll, there seem to be plenty of you to take part

What's the point?
* For fun
* For the challenge
* To try something new with a non standard medium  
* I'll feature everyone on my page for a week with the art from this challenge
* For my favourite piece, I'll give away my coffee creation as a prize (and if it sucks, I'll do you a drawing instead)

What are the rules?
* Paint a portrait using coffee as your medium and nothing else (well, maybe a tiny bit of graphite for your sketch and tiny touches of your choice of white/black medium for highlighting/darkening choice areas, but that's it!)  Your art must be at least 90% coffee.
* Paint whoever you like, but it must be a painting that you have put time into; I won't accept halfhearted or obviously rushed entries (I don't care about skill levels, I never have, never will, just that a little effort has been put in)
* I don't think there really much to be said here, you must use coffee to make your art - that is all!
* When your done, please send me a note titled "A Cup of Creativity" so I can gather everything in my faves to do the feature later
* If you could pop a little blurb into your artists comments saying it's for my challenge and a link to this journal that would be great, your watchers won't think you've lost the plot then
* You can enter a maximum of deviations, but if you so one and would prefer to enter it over one already entered, let me know and I can change it

What's the timescale?
* 8 weeks from today, so the challenge ends on the 21st February

Prizes?

1st Place
My A5/A4 painting from this challenge
400 Points from me
400 Points from the wonderful LilaeaBluecoat

2nd Place
An ATC from me
200 Points from me
200 Points from the wonderful LilaeaBluecoat

3rd Place
200 Points from me
200 Points from the wonderful LilaeaBluecoat

Tips?
* Well, I've never used coffee as a medium but I gather it is much like painting with watercolour
* So, considering that, be careful of the paper you use, make sure it is stretched or is a pre-stretched watercolour paper to prevent ripping or warping
* Try not to get carried away between layers, leave things to dry before overpainting or you get into a mess
* Make sure you mix up enough of your coffee mix to cover the area your working on, or your colours will be all skewy

There is a very wonderful artist here on dA who has a coffee tutorial that I think will be very useful :thumb288539460:

I hope that covers everything, but feel free to ask any questions you might have here or if you have any pointers, please let us know!
I do hope you'll take part!
Paula