Coffee and watercolor HELP!

[Iceedragons]

Hey people of conceptart!

I'm here to ask some help with a painting I am about to start in art class.
Our project must be a mixed media of watercolor. I am really wanting to create a coffee and watercolor painting. I adore the sepia colors that coffee creates, but my teachers had told me that I MUST include colors.

So my question is: Can I paint coffee first for values, and then add color with watercolors above? If not, is it possible to paint a greyscale under the colors, similar to how you would in digital art?

Thank you guys so much!~

[Mr-Joe]

You could try an experiment first, for example a simple ball or cube, shade it with the coffee let it dry, then try a wash layer of color over it to see how it works before using the technique on your painting.

Usually watercolor is worked from light to dark, so I'm guessing the best way would be to do all your color fist as light washes, then go over and do your values with the coffee.

You'd have to experiment depending on what your trying to achieve, for example you may want a darker value to be very saturated in color, in that case you may need to layer color over the values,

when working with water color just remember you usally cannot lighten a darker value, unless you use gouche or acrylic over it, so think about working from light to dark.