Following Turmeric Tortoises, here is another little experimentation with a natural pigment – tea – which I used before in Tea Painting.

Although this was a task for my course, and it has definitely encouraged me, this is a project I have had in my mind for a while.

These are little character silhouettes for an illustrated story about a dad and his daughter who move to live in a lighthouse on the Scottish coast in the unspecified past.

I love Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories and wanted to attempt to capture a similar spirit, with beauty, strangeness, the unjudgemental love of community, sometimes sadness, closeness to nature, etc.

In the world of the lighthouse, the lonely dad and daughter find new friends and family, and new purpose, and everything can be made ok with a cup of tea. The appropriate medium seemed to be tea itself.

I find it hard to get any subtlety, but maybe the use of silhouettes would work well in this story instead of aiming for detail, and maybe that’s part of the charm of using tea?

Anyway, I’ll keep working on it.