Paint what you drink: Vancouver YouTube artist shows us how to paint with coffee

Vancouver's Mei Yu's online art videos continue to gain in popularity. She now has over 1.4 million subscribers to her YouTube channel that's full of art challenges,rangingfrom anime and manga, to trying out new materials that are a little out of the ordinary includingcoffee.

The renowned artistdecided to try drawing with instant coffee just to see what it would look like.

"I was thinking about painting with coffee as somethingthat's really unique and different," saidYu. "It's coffee, it's delicious ... and I thought it would be fun to show my viewers all kinds of art you can do with the things around you."

"I'm always trying to create different types of art challenges and interesting content."

• Burnaby woman became a YouTube star with her manga, anime tutorials

• Looking for some last-minute Halloween fun? Try painting pumpkins

Yu uses her regular brushes on watercolour paper that she finds at local arts stores. The paintings resist fading after they're finished.

Her fans love it.

She says the response has been so positivethatshe decided tomake a T-shirt out of her first coffee design and is now sellingthem.

Mei Yu posts the videos on her channel Fun2Draw. She started the channel to inspire other people to draw and paint after she grew up without access to any formal instruction.

• WATCH: Mei Yu teaches guest host Jason D'Souza how to paint with coffee on CBC's Our Vancouver.

With files from CBC's Our Vancouver