High-Contrast Coffee Portraits by Betsi Shelffo
Betsi Shelffo is an artist who creates high-contrast coffee portraits by attaching layers of roasted coffee beans to a substrate. Her works often come in the form of portraits, depicting celebrities, movie characters, and other pop-culture figures.
As a coffee lover myself I am rather drawn to Betsi’s images – her process originally grew out of her explorations with collage and decoupage techniques, becoming a visually streamlined form of this mode of creation. I’m impressed by the amount of detail Betsi is able to coax out of her medium – each bean is affixed to the surface in the perfect spot, with no apparent gaps, creating an image that looks quite smooth when viewed form afar.
Betsi's art website, www.beansbybetsi.com
Betsi spends numerous hours on each artwork, perfecting the design and placement of her medium. The finished works are polished and almost deceptively simple. The dark color of the coffee beans contrasts against her backgrounds to create a dramatic sense of light and shadow in these two-tone images.
