Hello people! In view of the global circumstances and inspired by so many artists and people sharing and caring for everyone who has to remain at home, I decided to finish this post that I initially started back in August last year. Due to the amount of workload, I had to pause but now felt the most appropriate time to publish something that could potentially inspire others. This post is based on my painting of a pain d’épices (French for “spices bread”) in which I illustrated the actual cake, its metal tin and a wooden spoon. I had the idea to go more in-depth into my own painting process. I realized that a crucial part of creating a realistic piece was getting the different textures right. Particularly in culinary subjects, texture is key in my opinion. While I am no expert (yet 😜), I feel that the best way to continue learning is by sharing and aiming to explain what you already know and even forcing yourself to investigate more to be able to provide as much value as you can. So, what that mindset, I will go over the three different textures I mentioned before and I will try to give you some tips and process so that you can try them too!
First off, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music would say Let’s start at the very beginning... Let’s take a look at the reference picture so that we can identify some characteristics and color values:
I think it is important to observe first and define which colour values we are going to use depending on the subject of the illustration. In the image above, I have tried to render each texture’s features so that we know what is the finish look we are looking for and approach each surface with the appropriate technique. Let’s see now, one by one, what was my course of action for each texture:
METAL
As I have established in the image above, metal is a very smooth and shiny surface with colour values that range from very dark and almost black to very bright highlights. The gradation and finish then has to be even and soft so the important part of the process for illustrating metal in this case is blending. I won’t go over the different ways to blend in this post but I will show you how I went about it for this piece:
Establishing the shape and position of the darker areas, all around the cake and following the reference photo with Polychromos Dark Indigo coloured pencil. Mainly distributed all around the cake and also the rim of the cake metal tin.
Using now a Polychromos Light Ultramarine, I established the mid-tone for the whole piece which is essentially a metallic blue. I complemented this colour with Caran d’Ache Pablo’s Light Grey to keep the values in cool tones while coming closer to the metal original metallic hue.
Finally, with Caran d’Ache Luminance White pencil, I enhanced the highlights of the metal tin and also to blend the previous layers of colour using a burnishing technique. With this method, you essentially apply more pressure with the pencil so that you are softening hard edges and getting a more “polished” finish. I tend to do this at the end of an illustration because you alter the tooth of the paper. In general terms, the more tooth a paper has, the more texture you get when you pain on it.
A little demonstration of how I painted the metal tin.
CAKE
The texture of the cake is very different from the metal and it is actually the opposite in terms of creating a smooth surface. Far from it! In this case, we are aiming at depicting all the cracks, the marks, the little and bigger holes that you can see from the original image of the pain d’épices. Here is how I painted the cake surface:
Using a darker tone, in my case Polychromos Walnut Brown coloured pencil, I started defining the areas of the cracks and placing all the little holes and bubbles of the surface of the cake. Essentially, we are building up the shadows and dark parts of the cake surface. I pressed the pencil a bit harder for cracks and holes (oh my, what a tutorial language! 😂) and then I rubbed the pencil a bit more gently to establish the shadows. In this case again, since the light comes from the left, the darker areas are at the right side. It is important always to keep track of where the light comes from and if you have difficulty seeing the dark and light areas, try turning the image into black and white and it gets easier!
Then, I used the mid-tone colours that I selected for this piece and those were mainly Caran d’Ache Pablo’s Russet and Polychromos Burnt Ochre to build more dimension on the surface. As I worked on the mid-tones, I realized that I had to darken even more some parts of the cake such as the outer edge touching the metal tin. It is important to leave the highlights or lighter parts of the surface untouched to that the contrast with the dark areas gives the impression of a three dimensional look. As I added more and more layers of colour, I used a colourless blender to combine all the colours in a smoother way. You can also use a cotton bud too for a more textured look!
In the end, again with Caran d’Ache Luminance White pencil, I added more highlights and further blended all the previous layers for a more consistent look. As I mentioned in the beginning, the cake’s surface is very textured so feel free to add even more holes and cracks to the final piece!
In this time-lapse video I published in Youtube, you will see the whole process of the cake surface.
wood
For the wooden spoon, I had previously established the light and darker areas with a soft wash of grey watercolour, defining the shallow oval at the top. The texture and the tones are pretty pale so it all consists of being very subtle with all the marks.
I used again Polychromos Burnt Ochre (you can use any other light brown pencil) with a sharp tip to add the strokes of the weathered wooden spoon. Vertical strokes for the handle and round ones for the oval hollow part.
With a darker colour pencil (I used Polychromos Walnut Brown), I further defined the round hollow part and a little hole at the base of the spoon. Shadows were already created with watercolors so in this case, the lighter the better but I also used a light warm grey (Polychromos Warm Grey) all over the outer left side (because the metal tin casts a shadow on the spoon) to enhance them.
Finally, I used Caran d’Ache Light Ochre to gently rub it agains the paper and create more of a grainy texture for the spoon. Et voilà!
I hope you enjoyed this step by step guide and further dive into food textures. This is a topic that I really love so if you would like me to create more posts like this one exploring other textures, give this post a like and leave a comment with another one you would like me to cover.
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Thank you so much for reading! Happy baking and painting 🍰
Miriam
Xxx