Jay Chou coffee

Being both a huge coffee addict and a minor clean freak, I can’t stand spilling even a drop of my precious black liquid. Drops of tea of coffee in a saucer annoy me so much that I’ve been known to decant my drink into a fresh cup and start over. Similarly, if I’m in a restaurant and the condensation from my glass leaves wet marks on the table I’m forever cleaning them up with paper napkins.

Not this artist. Where most of us see annoying table-cloth-ruining stains and wet patches to soak our sleeves, Malaysian artist Hong Yi, also known simply as Red, sees a tool to paint with. By spilling a little coffee into a saucer, dipping her cup into it and pressing it down onto a canvas over and over again, she has created this portrait.

The entire mesmerizing process in video format after the jump!

Check out this high-speed video of Hong Yi’s caffeine-addled creation:

The above portrait of Taiwanese singer Jay Chou took Red an incredible 12 hours to create, touching her coffee-soaked cup hundreds of times with no discernible guidelines to follow.

Inspired by Chou’s song “Secret”, Hong Yi decided to use her coffee cup to paint the image after seeing the singer lift his cup from a saucer at the beginning of his accompanying music video. “Hundreds of individual coffee stain rings, many of them broken and imperfect like fallen autumn leaves, form a whole portrait,” she writes on her blog.

Hong Yi 1

As gorgeous as Hong Yi is, I think sitting opposite her in a café while she paints pictures on the table with her glass would drive this writer nuts. No doubt she’ll be devastated to hear it(!), but I can’t see it working between us…

▼Clearly Hong Yi likes her coffee strong…

Hong Yi 2

▼The level of detail around the mouth and eyes in particular is astounding

Hong Yi portrait

▼Hmmm, that cup’s going to need some serious scrubbing…

Hong Yi 3

“As a little kid, I dreamt of becoming an artist,” the artist comments at the close of her photo tour. Well, if this portrait isn’t proof that she’s made it, we’re not sure what is.

Keep up the fantastic work, Red!

Source / images: Oh I see Red! via Cinapig