04-05-2025
Star Wars: Artwork made from tea bags
Meet the artist who has been brewing up some out of this world masterpieces... Caroline West decided to take something most people throw away - tea bags - and use them to create art of popular Star Wars Luke Skywalker to Chewbacca, she has made 30 miniature paintings in total, which each take three to four hours to make.
Caroline, who is a big Star Wars fan, said: "I grew up watching the original movies and they're just so iconic, they were ground-breaking at the time."She said she really enjoyed painting the lightsabres in particular: "I tried to give off the impression they were glowing by layering white paint with coloured paints multiple times."The pieces of artwork also have fun titles playing on teabags and Star Wars characters names, including Brewbacca and R2Tea2.
Caroline wanted the artwork to be easy for Star Wars fans to recognise."I looked at pictures of iconic characters and watched movie scenes to make sure I captured things which would really resonate with fans and were things I thought I would realistically be able to paint," she said.
How is the Star Wars artwork created?
The first step in the process is to dry out the tea bags, then Caroline cuts them up, scrapes out all the tea and irons them Caroline tapes the edges, places the tea bags on backing paper and then uses acrylic paint to make the different first started using tea bags for her art in August 2023, starting with UK landmarks, including Stonehenge and Tower this year, she also made other magical masterpieces with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as said it is such an "amazing feeling" to paint these creations on such a small canvas."I just think the more you do, the more your confidence grows and you realise you can do the things you thought you couldn't," she added.
