Black Coffee with Some Sugar

The birth of a new series is always interesting -- especially, if the child was unexpected, like in the case of Black Coffee with Some Sugar, the brand-new direction in my "coffee" artwork. The idea popped up in my head when I was drawing The Moonstone, another project based on my prehistoric coffee sketches. In the middle of the process it became obvious, that The Moonstone didn't fit into the mainstream Black Coffee series, being too monochromatic. On the other hand, I've always wanted to make something in the spirit of Black Coffee with No Sugar -- a series of old black-and-white coffee sketches made in 1993-1996 -- only a little more refined. The sepia tones of The Moonstone pushed me to the right decision: something between the "hardcore" Black Coffee with No Sugar and the colorful Black Coffee, closer to the brownish palette of the actual coffee grounds, from which these sketches originated in the first place. Black Coffee with Some Sugar has been chosen as the title for the new series, to emphasize its roots.

The new series will "feed" mainly from the three sources: the old stash of "unpublished" coffee drafts, the "remastered" versions of some of the Black Coffee with No Sugar titles and the "sepia" remakes from the Black Coffee and Black Coffee II series. As for the latter, the beginning of the new "coffee" series doesn't mean the end of the current series, quite the contrary -- Black Coffee will continue to grow and flourish as one of the major series of my artwork.