A Guide to Understanding Texture and Form in Food Illustration: Cakes

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Nia, and today, I'm going to share with you a guide to watercolor textures and form, specifically for food illustration, and we're going to be painting cakes in this class. A lot of times, when we paint, we tend to focus on the little things like the details, but we forget about the overall form, which is actually key to how you can make a painting cohesive with each other, and in turn, you don't really need to add too much detail in order to make something look quite realistic. This class, I'm going to simplify this to break it down into smaller, more actionable steps so we can tackle difficult looking subjects, in this case, cakes into more efficient steps. By understanding the form, we will capture the overall idea of an object that you're trying to paint, and in turn, it will be so much easier to allocate the colors such as values, saturation, and textures. This class, I'm going to show you how I simplify the shapes and angles of the cakes, and then we can use and take these simpler shapes to create small thumbnail designs in case you want to create your own composition or layout. I'm going to show you how I brainstorm for ideas and look for references to support the flavors that you've decided to paint. Then we're going to do small painting exercises to break down values from simpler shapes of different examples of cake slices. Learn about how to make the textures, design our own cake, then finally putting it all together into your paintings. I'm going to paint three different flavors of cakes today in a cylindrical form. But hopefully, after doing the smaller exercises beforehand, you'll be able to customize your paintings. You can create the same flavors or different flavors and different cake shapes as well. Originally, I made this class for all levels, as I'll be going through a lot of basic fundamentals in the beginning for the exercises. So hopefully you can use these techniques and apply it to a painting of your own level. But for the final paintings, I will be painting in a bit more detail, which requires the knowledge of things like brush control, water load, and paint consistency. So I would recommend for students to have prior watercolor experience beforehand. With this set though, I've gotten quite a lot of messages when people post their projects once they're done that they're beginners and they manage to follow along to the paintings. So if you're a beginner and you want a challenge or you want to give this a go, I would welcome you, as well. I really tried my best in this class to break down the steps. So hopefully, it's something that you'll be able to follow and understand. Just as a disclaimer, I tend to speed through or cut through parts of the painting where it's repetitive or my hand is off the camera just to get the class going. And I understand that everyone learns and paints at different speeds. So if you're new to my classes, I would recommend for you to just get an overview of the lessons by watching it really quickly to understand the pacing of my lessons. And when you're ready to paint along, you can pause in between each step or each exercise. So you can paint, draw, and practice at your own pace without feeling rushed. So, if this sounds like something you'd be interested in trying, let's begin. 2. Supplies: In this lesson, I'm going to go through the supplies that I'll be using for this class. Firstly, let's talk about the brush. For all three cakes, I'm actually only going to use this one brush. This is by Princeton velvet touch and it's a size five. It's a synthetic round brush, and it's quite snappy. You can also use other synthetic brush for this. Brush is actually very new since I just opened it specifically for this class. So the tip of my brush is still very sharp and pointy, and this way I can easily paint all the tiny little details just using this one brush. However, if your brush is a little bit older and the tip is slightly frayed and a bit hard to control, I would suggest for you to pair this up with a small size zero brush to paint the tiny little details. Can also use three sizes. This is a size two brush. This one is Bartimdia, but you can use any other round synthetic brush that is a little bit smaller. So you have options to choose from when you find there are certain areas that is a little bit harder to control. Next, let's go through the paper I'll be using. Firstly, I'm going to use my sketchbook just to do little plans like the actual cake design for painting it on and also little layouts like this for the pencil sketches. It's just a little bit easier this way to have it compact in a sketchbook. But you can also just use scrap print paper if you want. Generally, when I'm planning for a class, I just use scrap paper just to get ideas down really quickly. So just pick and choose whatever you're comfortable with doing. As for the watercolor paper, I'm going to be using a single sheet of an A three watercolor paper to do the small exercises, trials, and things like that, as well as the final painting. And this came from this large sketchbook, which is by KansNXL and the thickness is 300 GSM. This watercolor sketchbook is perforated, so I just took one sheet, but you can also use your watercolor sketchbook or paint on a separate sheet of watercolor paper. If you want to frame your painting as a house or kitchen decor. I've actually made a lesson where you can experiment with different layouts in case you want to create specific painting for maybe a diary entry or house decor. Next here are all the colors that I'll be using for all three cakes. But I will also have the swatches available for you to download. The first one is for the first cake, which is the raspberry and pistachio cake, second for the strawberry, and the last for the coffee cake. But I'll also have a list of all these colors at the end of this lesson so you can get everything ready. As for the palette, I'll be using this palette. You can see it's quite old. This is just a cheap plastic palette from die so originally, the color was white, but now it's a yellow tint. However, I still like using this because I've used it so much that I've made a lot of micro scratches. When I'm mixing paint, the palette holds my paint quite well. And my paint in turn doesn't beat up. When the paint beats up, sometimes it's a bit hard to control the load on your brush because instead of getting the amount that you want on your bristles, you might end up soaking a large bead of water or paint. This is generally the problem with plastic palettes, but as you can see if you've used it enough, you'll get rid of that problem. But if you want to avoid this altogether, you can also use a porcelain palette instead. Next, you'll, of course, need a jar of water to clean and reload your brush. I'm only going to use one, and then I'm just going to replace the water whenever it gets too dirty or whenever I'm switching to a different cake that I'm going to paint. You can also use two jars. So one jar would be to clean your paint, and the other jar would be to reload your brush. So the water where you'll clean your brush will get quite dirty, whereas the other jar will stay fairly clean. You'll also need tissue or paper towel right next to you. This is as important as all the other supplies, as important as my palette or as my jar of water or even my brush, I would not paint without this. I use it almost every time I reload my brush in order to get the right load, and the load determines how much and how quickly the water and paint flows out from your bristles. This is why I can create really thin lines when I'm using a light load, even when I'm using a medium sized brush. For the sketches, I'm going to be using my pencil. This is bipenl sharplt and for the filling, I like to use either HB or two B. I'll also be using an eraser. My favorite brand is B Boxy. This erases very cleanly, but you can use any eraser you have on hand, as well as kneadable erasers. And lastly, I'm going to use a hair dryer to make the drying process quicker. You can also just wait in between and move to another step in order to wait for certain things to dry. But when I want to paint the next layer instantly, this is very handy to have right next to you. And that's basically for the supplies. I'll have all the items listed here where you can take a screenshot or you can download it in the projects and resources section as well. 3. Shapes and Angles: B. In this lesson, we're going to simplify the shapes of the cake slices. And basically, they're just geometrical shapes. I'm going to show you three types of cake slices in this lesson. But if you have any other ideas, you can go ahead and play with it as well. For the first one is a square slice. What I initially made was a cube. From this angle, you can see three faces or three sides of the cube. If you look at it from the top, sometimes the bottom can look slightly distorted, so the sides will slant inwards ever so slightly. Once you have the basic shapes, it's so much easier to divide it up if you want to make the layers smaller and have different types of fillings. You can just follow the lines that you've already drawn out for the main shape and add on more layers. These squares can also be easily turned into rectangular ones. So here's a rectangular slice. If you'd like, it follows more or less the same rule as the square ones. But I'm just drawing out here as an example. Next is the classic cake slice, which will be in a wedge shape. So as long as you know how to draw a wedge, like before, you can divide it up and add on the layers for the cake and the filling. Now with the wedge slices, sometimes the wedges can be shorter or taller or sometimes a little bit thicker. So that's something that you can experiment with as well with your composition. Generally from the photos that I've seen, those fancy moose cakes with mirror glazes tend to be a bit shorter compared to, say, a classic birthday cake. I'm going to draw a taller version of a more traditional cake with a cream filling. Just like before, I started with the wedge, but this time, I extended the height, and this is the way I'm going to divide up the filling for the cake. I just made three layers of cake with two layers of filling in the middle. Depending on the look that you're going for, you can of course, make them a little bit taller, even if you would like, or if you like this height, but you want to add extra filling, then you would just need to divide up the spacing a little bit more. As an example here, I added a jam filling in between the cake and the cream. For the next one, I'm going to draw a more dynamic angle where you can see three sides of the wedge if you're looking at this from the top. So you can see a lot of the toppings at the top. Then just like before, follow the lines from the wedge for the layers of the cakes. I would say that this is more tricky compared to the other angles. But if you would like to experiment with your composition, you can add this in to add a little bit more dynamic for the overall look. This is also a fun way to showcase the topping if you want to play with the cake decorations on top. With this angle, you can see the most from the top. Whereas for the other angles, you can see mostly the side of the cake a little bit more. For me, though, because I want to focus on the texture of the cake, I'm going to show more of the side angle, not from the top. And here, I'm just going to draw an example of what the topping would look like if I paint it or draw it from the side. Next is the cylindrical shaped cake. This basically just looked like a mini cake, and this is the shape that I was inspired by to create this class. I just think they look so cute presented this way, especially with some strawberries lined along the outside of the cream. So just like before, starting with the three D shape of a cylinder this time, you can divide up the layers according to the side of the cylinder. As an example of the strawberry one here because I only want two layers of cake with a thick cream in the middle. I just follow the lines to the top of the cylinder and the bottom of the cylinder, depending on the thickness of the cake that you want. But just like before, you can always divide it up into more layers of cakes or even add a few layers of different fillings, depending on the design of cake that you want to create. So just like the square slices. Now, if we want to slightly shift the angle where we can see a little bit more off the top, then the sides would come in a little bit more. And I also want to follow the top and the bottom to add lines for the layers of the cake. Now, what you want to take into consideration here with the cylindrical cakes, when you're drawing on the lines, you do want to follow an invisible line to the back of the cake for the ovals, just like the top. If not, in terms of the perspective, it might look a bit wonky. So if you're ever unsure about how curvy those layers should look, you can always continue the line to create an oval at the back just very lightly, and then just erase it once you're done if everything makes sense. Then just like the rest of the cake layers, if you want to add an icing on top, you can also increase a little bit of the height slightly by creating another oval. Now, if you're curious, we can exaggerate the angle even more. The oval is more circular and you can see a little bit more from the top, which means we won't be able to see the bottom as much. As I'm drawing on the sides, I would make them tilt a little bit more inwards. Usually, I was also having difficulties to figure out what the bottom would look like. I took my own advice and I drew out another circle or an oval underneath and I can use that as visual guideline. But once we have the basic form now it's a bit easier to use as guideline for the rest of the elements. Here I'm going to draw the same type of cake as the first one just to show you what it would look like in a different angle. So let's follow the layer of the cake, align to the top and the bottom curfature. So I have enough space in the middle. Then I can add on the strawberries, which will also tilt following the lines on the sides. As for the topping, I'm going to add a bunch of strawberries cut in half facing each other. And because we can see more of the top, you can also see the strawberries at the back. Whereas with these ones, you would be able to see the sides of the strawberries, but a bit less of the strawberries at the back, especially for this cake on top. So here are a few different types of cake slices and angles. You can mix and match any of these for your composition or just pick one that you can repeat for different flavors. 4. Drawing Soft Textures: What we have so far here in the sketches are the basic shapes. We can see the lines here are very straight. They look like they could be made out of boxes with sharp angles and really straight lines. But in this lesson, I'm going to try to convey the soft texture of the cakes with softer uneven lines. Going to start by roughly erasing the outline, you can see a little bit of the previous lines from before and we're going to use it as guide. Now, instead of drawing straight lines, this time you can see I'm making uneven jagged lines for the corners, I'm trying to avoid really tight corners like this. Instead, I try to make it look more organic, so the ends are not as sharp, maybe even slightly curved and the edges uneven. You don't even have to do this by following through with the lines. Sometimes I like to add spaces in between, and this will just suggest something that is a bit more soft and airy. When we have softer lines like these, it's a little bit easier to paint over instead of those very straight lines. Our eyes tend to be able to follow those straight lines easier, whereas more organic uneven lines, especially with spaces in between, can disappear behind the paint a bit easier, even when some of the lines might still show through. What I like to also do before I paint is also to use my eraser to just tap and lighten the lines even more, or you can also do this with a kneadable eraser. So let's just try to redraw the lines. It's uneven and I have spaces in between, it almost looks like it's dashed. You can see it's very soft and airy compared to a strong straight line. Now let's repeat this to another cake slice. This is basically applicable for all the different types for the cream as well. But for the cream, I try to not make the lines as jagged. It's just sometimes slightly slanted a little bit, but the edges are definitely not as sharp as how we sketched it out earlier. Now, here is the area for the cake. I'm going to apply the same method as before. Left out a little bit of space for the jam as well. I made the jam a little bit more gloopy and the lines are more rounded compared to the cakes. Here by just changing the type of lines, you can see that this looks so much more soft and caky. You can also add little dots and things like that for extra texture. But since we're going to paint this, the added textures will be painted later on. I'm also going to do the same for the cylindrical cake. I just want to show you that this is applicable for all cakes. If you want to practice this, you can go ahead and create the softer lines for all of the sketches. But after this, I'm going to move on to the next lesson. 5. Thumbnail Designs: Now, with the shapes that we've sketched out earlier, let's try to put them into a layout. And this depends on the dimension and the aspect ratio of what you want your final paintings to be. I can either be landscape, square, or portrait. So I'm just going to kind of draft out little thumbnail ideas really quickly as an example of what I would do in order to get a visualization of different layouts. We've simplified the shapes before, it's now much easier and quicker to draw them. I'm also doing very small sketches here, so we can somewhat do a quick brain dump where we don't have to spend too much time on any single layout. So notice how I'm drawing the main shapes like the cube, the wedge, and the cylinder first. This way is much easier to figure out the spacing before adding on the layers on the cake and the toppings, which I'm also just going to scribble in. You want to figure out here is the shape of the cakes that you want to include in your final painting, as well as the placement. You can do different combinations by just changing one little thing at a time and come up with so many different ideas that you can pick from. Here I'm just going to speed things up so I can quickly show you the different layouts that I had in mind. Want to show you both the landscape and portrait ideas. You can also pick one shape that you might want to repeat over the whole page with different flavors, which is what I personally want to do for this, or even just paint one single cake on a page or on your sketchbook. You can also make this as complex or as simple as you wanted to personally because I'm making this for all levels. I'm just going to keep it fairly simple, even though I might add different elements to the design of the cake. But you can also add little decorative elements in your layout to make it more fun and dynamic. So like the two layouts that I drew out earlier, I added some splatters, as well as little elements from the toppings, which I just scatter around the page to make it look more fun, and it will also make the page more colorful. For me personally because I want to focus this class on the textures and the form, I'm going to keep it simple and just do three cylindrical mini cakes that I'm going to create in different flavors. Depending on your levels and how much time you have, you can make this as simple or as elaborate as you want. If anything, I'd be so excited to see the different ideas you post in the project section. If you're super comfortable with painting, another idea is to treat this as an urban painting where say you bought three flavored cakes or one cake you can paint in different angles and you can add text like a small diary entry, I would say, with the different flavors and colors and what happened during the day, I think that this idea would be really cute as well. As you can see, there are just endless combinations if you want to practice different cake slices. But you like the flavors that I combined in my painting. You can also do your own version of, say, a cube or a wedge with the same flavors that I painted, but feel free to experiment and just have fun with this. 6. Reference Ideation: After doing the layouts, I realize I want to paint three types of cakes. But of course, this depends on your own layout. You can just paint one or maybe even fit five, depending on the size of paper that you're going to paint on. But since I'm going to paint three, I'm going to figure out the flavors by just writing down ideas of the flavors I can combine. I've been wanting to paint the strawberry cake for a while, so that will be the one that I place in the middle and I know that I want strawberries with two vanilla cakes at the top and the bottom. I also want a chocolate cake, but maybe something like a coffee and chocolate so mocha cake. The cream and the cake can be different tones of brown. Then leaves me with one more cake, and since I want to include a different color, I thought about pistachio or maybe matcha for a green cake, or I can also paint like a purple cake with an ube or taro flavor. But by the end of this, I realized that I want to do a combination of pistachio and raspberry, so I can use both pinks and greens together. Now that I figured out the three flavors, I'm going to search for pictures and ideas for both the filling and the toppings. For this, I like to look through Pinterest and just search for mini cake ideas or even look for flavor combinations if you're still not set on a specific one. You can also look at the angles. Personally, I like the angle here where you can see most of the sides because I want to focus more on the filling and the texture of the cakes for this. I quite like how this looks, so I'm just going to click it and scroll down to see if there are any other good ideas. Long slices also look really cute. That could also be an idea. You can also add piping, but it can be a little bit tricky to paint. Going to keep looking through and see if there are any other ideas. I really love the colorful ones, so these ones are so cute with the sprinkles and different colored cakes and fruits. Hopefully by doing this, you can get ideas or even little snippets of ideas. But personally because I already know what flavors I want, I can just type it in to make the search a bit easier. So I just wrote down raspberry pistachio mini cake, and the first picture is already so cute. I really love the layers as well as the topping. I actually really like the topping because the raspberries look very plump and cute. And I also love the combination of the green and the pink. From this, you can also get ideas of the types of layers you can include in your painting. If there are any small elements or features that I like from a picture, I would then save it. This way, I have a library of pictures, and I can sort of, like, mix and match the different elements together in a painting. Now, moving on to the next one. I know I want to paint a mini strawberry cake. Technically, I already have an image in my head of what the cake is going to look like, but I do want to look for references for the strawberry shape because I know strawberries come in different shapes. Some of them are big, some of them are small, some of them are more rounded, and I'm also looking for references of cut strawberries as well, because some can look softer than others. So this is what I usually do. If I'm already sure about something, but I'm only unsure about a certain element, then I would look for references just for that particular element. Let me just take you through my saved images. Here are the strawberry slices that I like and also the combination of the pistachio and raspberry cake. I really like the layers on these and the topping and I like the variety of strawberries. I see from these three pictures. I really like the topping here with the wafer and the blueberries and a bit of green, but I'm still unsure about the piping. We'll see later as we tackle this. And as for the cake, I want to remind myself that I want at least two different tones for the filling of the cake. I'm thinking either chocolate cake with coffee cream or coffee cake with chocolate Nash filling, or it can be a mixture of chocolate Nash and coffee filling as well. These are the images that I saved and I will compile them into a document where you can download in the projects and resources section. 7. Cake Desig: Now that we've gone through the ideation and looking through references, I'm going to put it all together for the three cake designs that I'm going to make. So for the first one, I'm going to create a raspberry pistachio cake, and I want to have a circle of raspberries with some half pistachios sprinkled on top. Just like the ideation process, I'm doing this very quickly, and I'm also simplifying the elements to quickly get my ideas across. I'm going to have a translucent jelly for the topping, and for the rest of the filling, I'm just going to first draw the main shape, which is the cylinder. And at the bottom, I think I'm going to create, like, a crust using maybe a mix of cookies and some pistachios or freeze dried raspberries. So I can include some crunchy textures with the soft textures of the mousse and the cake. Since the cookie crumb at the bottom is going to be slightly green. So on top of this cookie crust, I decided to use a pink color. So that means that will be the raspbery mouse, which leaves me with the space in the middle for the pistachio cake. Then on top, I'm going to add another mouse with maybe a little bit of jam filling in the middle. So I can play with the value of the colors as well. Point though, I wasn't sure whether I want to add two layers of cake or just one. So I'm just going to draw it this way for now. At least I know the elements that I'm going to include in the final painting. It just depends on the layering that I do later on. When you're drawing, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to figure out what's what. So I always like to add some writing just to remind myself what elements I want to include and the types of textures or colors. But I think that's it for this one. I'm just going to clean out the outline so it makes a bit more sense for you guys to see. But once I'm done, I'm going to move on to the next design. Since I already know what I want to do with the strawberry one, I'm going to sketch out the chocolate cake next. This will be a chocolate and coffee cake just so I can get the ideas out of my head really quickly. I like to start out with just the cylinder shape so I can add the filling and the topping easily. The topping, I like the combination of wafer blueberries and also some greeneries for extra color that I've seen in the reference picture. That's what I'm going to add here. There's still a bit of space. I might add cream or something else, but I think I need another element for the topping since there's still a little bit of space. I was thinking of adding cream, but that might be a little bit difficult to add a pipe cream, especially with a star tip. We'll just leave it for now. I'm fairly happy with the elements I have so far. It's just one additional thing that I might add to fill in the space. Under this, I might make it into a chocolate ganache, but I'm not sure whether I want it to drip down or not. I'm just going to draw the dripped chocolate idea. I'm just not sure if this is going to be too much or not. If I feel like there's already a lot going on, I think I'm going to skip the dripped chocolate and just do a straight up chocolate ganache, but make it look glossy. This one, I want to have a cookie base as well, but the color will be different because this one doesn't have the pistachio rum. I also want to include a thick chocolate gnache, some coffee cream, and a chocolate cake. Now, in terms of the layering, though, I wasn't sure how it was going to approach this. Just like before, I just want to get the elements down, write down all the ideas and then figure it out as I go when I paint later and see how much space I have and things like that. I think this is enough information for me to use to figure things out before I paint. So next I'm going to move on to the strawberry cake. This one is probably the simplest one, but the strawberry itself can be a little bit tricky to paint. For the topping, I'm going to maybe have four strawberries, small ones which are bunched together in the middle. And I'm not sure, but I might also add some light cream as well in between these berries. But just like before, I'm still not too sure about this, it really depends on how difficult it's going to be to paint the cream. But if it's just a small amount, I feel like it's going to be fine. Then for the filling, I'm going to have two cakes, one at the top, and one at the bottom. And in between, I want half strawberries as a border around the thick cream filling. Just like the top, I want the strawberries to be small, like the ones that I showed you in the reference image. They're mostly oval, but the tip is a little bit more sharp compared to the bottom, which is wider. I might also add a layer of jam at the bottom, but I'm still unsure about this. I might also end up keeping it simple. 8. Shadows and Faces: In this lesson, I'm going to talk about the form of the shapes that I went through in the last lesson. In order for us to make a convincing painting, generally, we need to know where to place the values because that's where the shape and the dimensionality will be formed. Then once we've established how the values are going to be placed, then we can add things like texture on top of the form that we visualize in our heads in order to depict the actual textures and feel of the specific elements. So here I've just roughly and lightly sketched out the shapes and we're not going to worry about textures for now. I just want to talk about the different faces and how to separate them when we're painting. I'm going to slightly speed up the process because it's more about understanding the form compared to how I paint this. But what I want to show you is, let's say we have the light coming from one side, and I'm going to do the same position of light for all of these shapes. Which means the lightest area should be the top of the cube and the side where is closest to the light on the side should be a little bit lighter compared to the opposite side. You can do this by just using the same color and just playing with the consistency in order to create different values, or you can also use other colors to increase the saturation on one part and make the area in full shadow look a bit more muted. Here I'm just going to dry it off so I can introduce another color. I'm going to darken a bit of the left side of the right face a little bit more because I want to create a gradient from the left to the right since the light is coming from the right, and this will also darken it in comparison to the top face. With a bit of Sepia, I'm going to go over the left face because this part is in full shadow, I'm making the color look more muted. I'm also going to use the same color for the cast shadow as well. This isn't exactly going to be the exact colors that I'm going to use later on for the painting, but this is just so you can visualize it a little bit better when I'm applying color and values to these shapes. For the wedge because we can only see two sides. Technically, the top should be lighter than the side that is facing us where the layers of the cakes are going to be. But I'm going to just create a gradient and make one side a little bit lighter compared to the others, so it doesn't look completely flat because I feel like some of the light is coming from the back as well, and the thin side of the wedge would catch a little bit more light. I'm going to darken the right side and the left side will be a little bit lighter. Now, again, with the cylindrical one, because the light is coming from the top right, I'm just going to paint the whole thing with the same color first. Then for the shadow this time in the middle, I'm going to add a different type of brown and on the left, which will be the darkest shadow, I'm going to use the CPA. Sometimes you can also use different tones to create shadows because the shadows might be reflected of a different color or something that is a bit warmer or even cooler. Personally, I like warm tones, which is why I picked this brown. I find by doing this, it also brings more interest to the painting because it makes the shadows look more alive compared to just using one color with a gradient. Here what the form should look like. When I'm painting later, you can paint along to this or just watch this for a bit of understanding. 9. Cake Texture: B. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint the cake texture. For the cake texture, what I like to do is to spread a light consistency on my brush. Then I like to rotate my brush around and just use the tip to create an uneven surface while leaving a bit of white space here and there. I want this to look randomized and I want to create very small brush strokes. The application of paint becomes a bit more textured and uneven. The more we do the starting motion and broken brush strokes, the more uneven and textured the surface will look. It might look weird, as is, but when we apply this to a cake, it actually looks quite convincing. And we can also do this in different colors as well, using the same motion. And this applies to all the different shapes of cakes as well when they are sliced and we can see the crumb of the cake. So it doesn't really matter what the shape is. It can be the cube cake or the wedge cake, the cylindrical cake, or even a Swiss roll. This lesson, I'm going to do this in different colors, depending on the color of your cake. Just to show you examples, you can practice this motion using the same vanilla cake color or play with different colors as well depending on the flavors you want to create. But I'm just going to speed this up since I'm going to use the same method over and over again. This one is an example of a chocolate cake, I used a slightly darker brown and then I'm going to add an even darker brown while the surface is still damp. But whenever you're doing this, make sure that the load on your brush is fairly light. This means your bristles come to a very fine point at the tip of your brush and you don't really see too much glossiness. This way, as the paint glides, it'll be much more controllable and you won't be forming too much puddles. The example here is a pink cake. This is from vermilion. Then I'm going to add a bit more vermilion this time mixed with a little bit of the dark brown, but only just a touch to darken it ever so slightly. Generally, when we're making cake, we tend to use yellow ingredients like butter and egg yolks. Even if you add coloring, unless you add a lot of coloring into your batter, it will have a slightly yellow or a warmer tint to the colors that you choose. Now, with these strokes in mind, we can apply it to a simple cake painting. And depending on the size of your cake, you can use a smaller or larger brush to do this. So here I'm just sketching it very, very lightly, and we can fill in those cake layers with the textures. I'm just going to do a simple vanilla cake, starting with a bit of yellow ochre here, and because it's small, I've switched to a small brush as well. Just doing light taps with the tip of my brush with a light load. And while the surface is still a little bit damp, I'm going to go back in with a slightly thicker consistency around the back of the cake here to create a slight gradient, but the gradient is still textured. H. I'm going to create a strawberry filling for this. I'm using a mix of vermilion with Chinese white to create a pastel pink. As for the cream, I'm applying the paint normally, just trying to fill in the space. Just like the cake, I try to use a lighter consistency towards the tip of the wedge. But as I'm applying, I'm just trying to fill in the space, and it's okay to leave some white spaces here and there. I'm going to use the same color for now to paint the top, again, just filling the space in. Then I'm going to use a thicker consistency of the same mixture with a bit more vermilion and the ratio to darken the side. And from here, we can start to see the form of the different faces. This is just a very simple painting of a cake, but we can build the detail by layering more textures on top. Generally, the textures will be smaller and smaller as we add on more layers, and this is something that will bring more realism to the painting. So as an example here, I'm just going to add more. You can see the texture is a bit more defined now with the addition of this new layer. And by the way, this is just two layers, but you can add others like the third layer for little finer details like air bubbles, which we're going to do in the final paintings. Um Let's try to apply this to the cake. I've added a bit of quinciena and the tiniest bit of Sepia into the yellow ochre, and I'm going to darken the top and the bottom part of the cake. The crust of the cake are usually slightly darker than the crumb, and that's what I'm trying to depict here. Again, using a very light load, so the paint is easy to control. With the same color, I'm going to add more textures, especially at the back of the cake to make it darker. If you feel any certain area is too dark, you can dab off some excess paint with tissue and using crumpled tissue will also add texture as you take off the paint. Just like that, we now have a simple cake. 10. Filling: Depending on how loose you want to paint this, you can paint a free hand. Firstly, I'm just painting free hand to give you a quick demonstration here so I don't have to sketch it out again. But in this lesson, I want to show you how to create a little bit of texture for the filling as well and the types of things that you can create. It's just going to be a quick lesson. But in the final painting demonstrations later, I will still go through them in detail for those specific flavors. Here I'm just painting the base first. Then I'm going to quickly dry it off so I can paint the second layer to separate the top face and the side face. Again, I'm using the same color, but I'm just going to go over it so it looks darker than the top. And since I want this cream to be made out of real fruits, I'm going to add small specks of the same pink. Using the very tip of my brush, again, this is with a really light load, so those specks won't turn into big puddles. If we want to paint this very loosely, we can also suggest some strawberries peeking out from the cream. And here I'm using a really bright red from crimson lake and vermilion. I'm just going to create some random shapes. As you can see, these shapes are by no means accurate at all, but because of the overall context of the painting, our brain can easily assume that there's fruit in between the cake and the cream. Now let's add the cake texture using the tip of my brush. Some of the filling is still a little bit wet. I try to not touch it, or you can also dry it off with a hair dryer. But if some color bleed out, I feel like this is the beauty of watercolor as well. You just kind of let it bleed as long as it doesn't disrupt the other elements too much. And again, I'm going to dry it off so I can add a little bit more texture on top. As I'm painting, I always have tissue right next to me or I'm holding it, even though you can't see it here. I like to use it to take excess paint off my brush when I feel like something is a bit uncontrollable, of course, you can also use the tissue to take off excess paint on paper as well. I'm also going to add a bit of caschto so the cake doesn't look like it's floating. I'm just using a brown color here, but later on, I'm going to use a different color for the cscheto. That's how you make cream. It's very simple. Next, I'm going to show you how I paint jams. You can imagine that the texture of jam is more of a glupy texture, so the lines that I create will be rounder and more curvy. Since there's only going to be a thin layer of jam here, I can just go over the previous layer since it's not too dark anyway and start with a vermilion here, leaving some white space in between. Then I'm going to go back in with a stronger red by adding some crimson lake into the vermilion. And I'm going to darken the center as there will be richer and darker shadows on the inside of the cake. That said if you can't see it. I basically made the lines curvy like this and I also want to leave out some highlights for the jam to make it look glossy. Now, these are just quick examples of the fillings. I'm going to add fruits and crust and things like that later for the flavors. I will go through them in detail as I paint later in the coming lessons. But these are just quick basics which you can do for simpler cakes. 11. Cake 1: Sketch: I've sketched out three cylinders. This way, I can just add the designs on top and for the filling easily. I'm going to paint the pistachio raspberry cake first. And here I've added another layer on top of the cylinder for the jelly topping, for the base of the raspberries on top. The shape of the raspberries are kind of similar to the strawberries. They're a little bit smaller, though, and the top is also more rounded, whereas the strawberries have more of a sharper tip. I'm going to place five raspberries in a circle and one in the middle that is a little bit higher than the other ones. So it looks like the centerpiece of the cake. Then in between these raspberries, I'm going to add ovals, and this will represent some h pistachios. By the way, for the paintings, I'm not doing them in any order specifically in terms of hardness. I feel like each cake has their own tricky parts to them, mostly for the topping. But in terms of the filling, they're kind of more or less the same level. So, in my opinion, it doesn't really matter too much which one you want to paint first. And you can also simplify it if these ones are a bit too complex for you to follow along to. As for the filling here, I'm just dividing up the spaces. For the cookie and pistachio crust at the bottom, I decided to make it uneven, so it looks a bit more handmade and fun. Then I'm just going to divide up and allocate the spacing so I can paint them within the lines later on just to make it a bit easier. As for the outlines and the sketches that I'm doing here, I tried to make it as clean and light as possible as you can see but if your lines are a little bit too dark, you can also use an eraser to just tap it over and make the lines lighter, which will make the painting experience a little bit more enjoyable since you don't have to worry about the pencil mark showing through your paint. 12. Cake 1: Filling: Okay. Now let's put what we've practiced into action. We're going to start by painting the cake texture, and I'm also going to paint this with a little bit more control this time. I'm going to use a mix of tear, Verde, and permanent yellow deep here. By the way, I'll have the list of colors for you to download in the projects and resources section. I've switched all the colors I use for the individual cake so you can have it right next to you to get everything ready. Getting back to the cake, I'm using a light consistency here, and I started in the middle, so I can pull the rest of the paint to the left and the right side. I want the right side to be the lightest since the light will be coming from the top right. So I'm going to start adding a bit more color from the middle by adding a bit more a verde in a light to medium consistency this time. I like to just use the tip of my brush to help spread it while doing the dotting motion, as I've demonstrated in the earlier lessons. As I get more towards the left, I'm going to darken the color further by adding some Sepia into the green mixture. I feel like the right side is looking a little bit too light and faded. So to brighten up the color slightly, I've decided to add more permanent yellow deep into array in a very light consistency and just applying it very subtly on the edges. I'm going to leave the base of the pistachio cake to dry now and move on to the actual base of the cake, which is the pistachio crumb. I'm going to start with yellow ochre in a medium consistency. And just like the cake before, I'm just doing this random tapping motion. This time, though, I'm leaving so much more white negative space because we're also going to introduce other colors into this section. So this is for a mix of eravere and sepia. Then you can also add on some permanent yellow deep into the mix as well to brighten the green. Going to apply a few colors. So it looks like a mix of cookies and some pistachio nuts, which comes in variations of green. So I have different shades of both browns and greens. As I'm painting this, I want to always make sure that the load of my brush is nice and light. So the paint flows out with ease, but it is still very controllable because we're involving a lot of different colors. If each dot is puddly then the paint will just end up blending into each other instead of them sitting next to each other and slightly touching. So remember to always control the flow by tapping the excess paint or water of your brush with tissue. So the cake looks like it's standing. I decided to add a darker brown at the bottom, so the base looks like it's slightly curved in. And I'm doing this while the surface of the crumbs are still a little bit damp, so you can see some of the paint also traveling upwards. And for a final touch for the base, I think that adding red would bring a nice contrast to the green. And since it's also going to be the raspberry color, I decided to just.in a very thick consistency of crimson lake. But I'm only going to do a few of these, and I also make sure that the dots are very small, so the red acts as accents instead. Next, we're going to paint in the raspberry mousse, and I'm starting with a light consistency of crimson lake. Just like the cake, I'm going to start in the middle, and I'm going to slowly paint on the left side and the right side using whatever's left on my brush. And since I'm painting the right side lost, this means that the right side will always be the lightest, which is basically what I'm going to try to do for all the layers. While the surface is still damp, I'm going to take a bit more color, and I'm going to place it on the left, going towards the middle because this will be the area in shadow, so I want the color to be a bit more rich and also darker. I feel like I need to separate the crust and the move somehow. In terms of the texture, I need to make the crust look like it has some kind of thickness. So to separate it, I'm using a thick consistency mix of crimson lake with a little bit of sepia, and this will sort of act as shadows in between those two textures. Then with the same color. I'm also going to.in the left side as well. You can see the surface is still damp here, so I'm just going to help the paint move a little bit with my brush. Want the left side to be the darkest and the most muted, going to the center or the middle, which is a little bit darker but more saturated in color and the right side to be the most pale. This is basically what I've demonstrated to you when we were talking about the form and the different phases. And I'm just going to repeat this for the top layer of raspberry mouse as well. I'm going to be very careful as I paint the edges. I don't need the color to be too saturated because the value is dark enough already. Now for the layer of jam in between the cake and the moose, I've introduced a different red. This is a mix of vermilion with crimson lake, starting with a light to medium consistency, just doing a light base. I'm going to layer really strong colors on top of this, which is why I don't mind if the right side was a little bit dark. The surface is still damp, I took a really thick consistency of crimson lake, again, using a very light load on my brush, and I'm using the very tip to spread the color and letting the color somewhat spread while leaving some bits from the base color still showing. I kind of like how the paint is reacting to each other, so I'm just going to leave it and move on to a different place while the paint starts to dry. I'm going to move back to the cake, which should be dry by now and add extra definition for the texture. This is from a mix of tera Verde with permanent yellow deep. Again, I'm using a light load on my brush and using a light consistency, starting from the middle, then pulling it to the right hand side until I run out of paint. Then for the left side, I'm going to add more averde in the mixture, and I'm also using a slightly thicker consistency, so the color is more rich and slightly darker. Moving on to the very left side, I've decided to add a little bit of CPI using a light to medium consistency and applying it with the same texture as before. Now, as I'm running out of paint, I'm going to use what's left on my brush to add some dots on the right hand side, because this is a light consistency, even when the value of the color is quite dark, it's still going to dry a bit more transparent and more subtle. I'm going to add a subtle crust to the cake, as well. So this is from a mix of tear verde with permanent el deep and sepia, using quite a thick consistency and the very tip of my brush to apply it to the top and the bottom. By the way, for these small parts, I'm just sticking with my brush because this is actually a brand new brush that I just opened, so the tip is still very, very sharp. So if the tip of your brush is slightly frayed, I would suggest for you to use a smaller brush instead to make the painting experience a bit more pleasurable and this way you have more control when you're painting. You know, with the same color, I'm going to add those dots as textures, but on the left side. I like to mix the consistency so I can add darker and lighter textures for these dots. These will just represent some air bubbles, which might be softer and some are a little bit more deep and darker. 13. Cake 1: Toppings: But now let's move on to paint the toppings. I'm going to paint a layer of jam that is solidified with maybe a bit of gelatin, so it will look a bit more firm and more defined. As the base, I'm using the same color as the jam layer before, which is from vermilion and crimson lake. I'm starting with a medium too thin consistency to give an outline. I make sure to paint the side face and then leave a stripe of white highlights. It looks like the edge of the topping. Then I'm just going to outline and fill in the rest of the space using what's left in my bristles. As the raspberries and pistachios are interacting with the jelly topping, I also want to leave some white highlights following the curvature of these fruits, but I try to make the highlights a little bit thinner and a bit more subtle. Just like before, I'm keeping in mind that the light is coming from the top right. I'm going to darken the left, especially behind the raspberries here. I'm just using a thicker consistency of the same mixture. You can see the colors a bit stronger. And as I'm painting towards the right hand side, I'm always following the curvature of the oval from the top here I'm going back in with an even thicker consistency with extra crimson lake in the mix to paint the side. I feel like the right hand side is a bit too dark, so I took off the excess with tissue while the surface is still damp. I'm going to build on the darker valleys along the side of the topping. I'm going to use a thick consistency, and I've added more crimson lake and a little bit of citia. I don't want to paint over the light parts that I've left out on the right hand side, so I'm going to be very careful to only paint really thin streaks as I get towards those areas. Next, I'm going to be painting the raspberries, but before then, because the raspberries have a pattern, and I'm going to be drawing with my brush as well. So I'm just going to sketch out here what I visualize before painting. So the raspberries are made out of tiny little ovals or circles. Apparently, these are called druplets from what I've Googled. So, Okay, I'm just going to refer them as the druplets. And with these, they are formed following the curvature of the raspberries, which is why it's important to think about the cross contour lines before we draw this out. So we have visualization of those droplets wrapping around our raspberries. After doing this, I want to make sure to still think about the form and where the light is coming from. Again, I'm just going to place it from the top right, which means the shadow will be on the bottom left. So overall for the color, it'll be darker on the bottom left with a slight gradient going towards the top right. Then because we have these droplets, which also has their own dimensions, I'm going to draw them out with my brush later on, but darken the left bottom side or the places where they're in shadow. Since we're going to be painting a lot of these, I'm just going to go straight to painting them. And I'll take you through step by step, then we can repeat the process for the rest of the raspberries. Instead of drawing the droplets straightaway, I'm going to paint the base color first using a really light consistency of vermilion with some crimson lake, and I'm starting with a light consistency so we can slowly build on the darker values as we start to develop the form. After painting the base, the surface should still be a little bit damp, so I took a slightly thicker consistency and I'm going to darken the bottom left. Now we start to see rough form of the raspberry. I'm going to leave this to dry now and move on to the next one, starting with the base color again. I'm just going to try to do a light wash evenly. Then with a thicker consistency, I added the darker values from the bottom going upwards. Because the first raspberry was still a little bit damp, I try my best to not let the colors touch. If not, the paint is just going to blend into each other. If this worries you, you can also dry it off completely with the hair dryer before moving on to the next raspberry. I'm going to keep working on the form by adding the darker values while the surface is still damp and this dark red is from crimson lake with a bit of CPI. I only place a little bit of this darker value right at the bottom of the raspberry in front. The left raspberry will look slightly darker still overall. Now moving on to the raspberry on the right hand side, this is where the light is hitting at most. I started with an even lighter consistency, and as I'm building the value, I tried to use a brighter red mixture. This is just from vermilion and crimson lake without the sepia and you can see the color is a little bit brighter and it's not as rich as the raspberries on the left. There are also some raspberries hiding behind the pistachios, and I feel like this is going to be very dark, so I just use a medium consistency of crimson lake with vermilion and a touch of sepia. And on the right hand side, I use the really light consistency mix of crimson lake with vermilion. Just to separate it a little bit from the raspberry in front, I also dotted in a slightly thicker consistency. The paint was still cold to the touch, so I just took advantage of it by adding even more darker values. Then I'm going to dry it off completely, so I can start painting on those droplets on a dry surface. I'm going to draw the druplets with my paint brush and to do this, I want to make sure that I have a light load on my brush, the tip comes to a very fine point. It's not frayed and you can't see any extra gloss or paint at the tip, which means you have a light load. If the tip of your brush still looks too wet, and then you can take off the excess with tissue. And then you have a much more controllable brush where you can somewhat draw with it and use it like a pen. By the way, I'm using the same brush here, but as I mentioned before, this is a brand new brush that I just opened. The tip is still very nice and sharp and the brush is still very controllable. But if your brush is a bit old and frayed, then I would consider changing to a smaller brush to do this part of the painting. So here, after I've drawn on the druplets, I'm just softening where the ends touch each other with a light consistency of the same color. And as I'm doing this, I also want to start building the form of the druplets in shadow by redefining them on the left side of each druplet with a slightly darker value. I feel like I have enough information here, so I'm going to move ahead to the next one on the left. Since this one will be darker, I feel like I don't need to be as careful with the lines. And once I'm done drawing, I'm also darkening the bottom left side. This time I don't mind if I lose a bit of detail as well because we want the texture to just act as suggestions and ours will do the rest of the adjustments automatically. So those are basically the steps. I'm going to apply the same thing for the raspberry on the right. But this time because this raspberry will be lighter, I just use a slightly lighter consistency. Going back to the one on the left, after everything has dried, I feel like the colors faded too much, so I'm just going to increase the darker value. I'm quite happy with how the raspberries look. Next, I'm going to paint the pistachios. I'm going to start with the lights color for the pistachios, which is from mix of yellow ochre and ter verde, which I place very lightly as the base color. Then I'm going to build up on the green. I added more ter Verde in the mix, but I'm going to darken it a little bit further with a touch of CPI as well. With this dark muted green, I'm going to paint the outer part of the hat stachos. So some of them, depending on where they are facing, it'll be on one side, and some are thicker than others. I also added a little bit of this darker color at the center, and if it's already completely dry, I use a really light consistency of it. This is just to make the surface look kind of natural and uneven. Pistachios tend to have different shades of green. So to add more brightness, I've added more permanent yellow deep into the previous mixture, and I'm just randomly adding it to some places. I'm also going to define the sides further with a mix of Tara verde and sepia in a thick consistency. I'm fairly happy with how everything looks. So now I'm going to darken and neaten some of the edges where each elements are interacting with each other. I'm also going to add extra texture where I feel is necessary, which will greatly depend on what you've done on your own paintings. But it's always good to just take a step back and connect all the pieces together as one cohesive subject. I feel like this is almost complete, but I'm going to finish it off by adding some sugar dusting and casado in the next lesson. 14. Cake 1: Shadow and Sugar Dusting: Next, I'm going to paint the cschto so it doesn't look like this cake is floating. And for the cscheto I'm using indigo mixed with the red from the raspberries, so this has a bit of vermilion, but mostly crimson lake. So the color will turn to a muted purple. And since this is color that I've chosen for the cast shadow, I'm going to connect the shadowy part of this cake, which is on the left side with this color as well. So here I'm just going to darken certain areas with a light consistency for the lighter parts like the cake and the mousse, as I'm painting, I'm also following the texture of these layers. For the raspberry, though, on the left, I use a slightly thicker consistency because the raspberry has more of a rich color. As for the actual cast shadow, since the light is coming from the top right, I'm going to paint the shadow going towards the bottom left. As I'm painting the shadow, I started with area closest to the cake. Then as I move outwards, I'm going to soften the edges with a clean damp brush, so the outer shadows are slightly softer and lighter and near the cake, I want the color to be a bit dark. So while the surface was still a little bit damp, I added a slightly thicker consistency. As a finishing touch, this is optional, but I want to add extra texture. I'm going to add a light sugar dusting using a thick consistency of bleed proof white and I'm just creating random dots following the druplets of the raspberries. I feel like this is where lots of sugar will gather, but as I'm doing this, I try to not add too much. If not, the white will just end up flattening the painting instead of adding a bit of extra texture. And this is the finished look of the first cake. 15. Cake 2: Sketch: Moving on to the second cake, I'm going to paint a strawberry cream cake. Just like the design, I'm going to have two pieces of cake at the top and bottom, which leaves me with a large space at the center. At the top, I'm going to add an additional height for the jelly topping under the strawberries later on. I added another oval on top, then I extended the sides and erase the previous outline, which overlapped with this new one. For the filling, I'm going to draw out a bunch of strawberries and this is going to follow the curvature of the cake. These are going to be half strawberries and the shape of the strawberries are similar to the references that I've saved, which I would say looks like a rounded triangle or a more narrow guitar pick. I'm going to decorate this cake with four strawberries, and they're going to be more or less the same shape and size. But because these are full strawberries, I try to make the bottom look more rounded instead of flat because the ones at the bottom are half strawberries. And then in between the strawberries, I'm going to add little pipe decoration. These are going to be the piped cream, and you can see that it's overlapped behind the first strawberry in the middle. And once I'm done, I'm going to just clean the outline as best as possible and make sure that the lines are nice and light. 16. Cake 2: Strawberry: M. Before I start painting the filling of the cake, I'm going to take you through a quick lesson on how I paint the strawberries since that is part of the filling. Just going to start with a drawing first of an outline. Then I'm going to divide up the spacing, so hopefully it's a bit easier to visualize before you paint. Here is a reference to what I visualize when I painted the strawberries. I really like the small types of strawberries and you can see that the center is still very light and subtle compared to the skin or the outer part of the strawberry where the color is nice and vibrant. This is the contrast that I want to include in my painting. So this is how I divide up the section. I'm going to create an outer part or an outline with paint, and I'm going to pull the paint inwards to create those negative lines. Then in the middle, there's a white part, and then a really light pink at the center. So here with paint, I'm going to start by creating that outline using a very thick consistency of red from vermilion and crimson lake. See how I'm painting the lines with some curves. There are two ways to go about this. Here I've used the damp brush to lightly dampen where I want the paint to travel to as I'm pulling the paint inwards, or you can just skip the step and pull the paint inwards without the damp surface. With a clean damp brush, now I'm going to pull the vibrant red and I'm going to paint lines with thin white lines in between them. Damp brush will basically reactivate the paint that you've placed earlier, which is why it's important to start with a very thick consistency, you'll have enough pigment to spread. Sometimes I like to even go over it again with some more red along the edges when needed. Next I'm going to soften the blend between the white and the pink. Here I'm smudging it again with a clean damp brush, and I'm going to use a very thin consistency of the same red to paint lines at the center. As the paint starts to dry, I feel like the color is a bit faded along the outside, so I'm going to increase the vibrancy by layering a little bit more color and then again, pulling some of the paint and words. I'm going to neaten the blend a little bit and that's it for the half strawberry. Now moving on to the full strawberry, I'm going to start with titanium gold ochre, mixed with a little bit of vermilion and a really light consistency to paint the bottom. Then for the top, I'm going to use the same red mixture, but with mostly vermilion. I'm going to use a light consistency. And along the outside, I'm going to make it look textured by doing the same motion as before to create curvy edges. And as I'm filling the strawberry with the base color, I don't mind if I leave out some white negative spots. Now with a medium tootha consistency, I'm using vermilion, just vermilion on its own. I started with a tip, and then I'm going to paint dots to replicate the texture of strawberry. I made the dots a bit more dense on the left side, and since the light is from the right, I made the dots a little bit further apart and also lighter on the right hand side. I'm going to repeat the step, but I'm going to use a darker red. This has some crimson lake into the mix. Then I'm going to paint it over the previous color without covering it completely. For an even darker red, I'm going to use the same red mixture with added sepia this time, going to place it at the bottom, as well as add some dots on the left side. That's it for a simplified strawberry. At the bottom, you can add some green leaves, but I'm actually not going to do this for the cake, though it's an option. I'm just going to use a mix of te Verde with a little bit of vermilion and titanium gold ochre. 17. Cake 2: Filling: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint the cake. Unfortunately, I forgot to press the record button and I was painting already. I thought I was already recording. So let me just try to repeat this on a scrap piece of paper so you don't miss anything. I just quickly sketched and draw out the outline, but this is not going to be as accurate as the one before. I just want to quickly get across the technique and what I've done to create the textures, which I've basically explained before, but this time, we're combining it all together into the painting. So after sketching, I make sure the lines are nice and light. I made it slightly textured, and I erased any harsh lines. I'm going to start to paint the cake layers now, starting with titanium gold ochre. I'm using a medium to light consistency in the middle because this is where I want the most vibrant color to be. I'm tapping and using the slide and the tip of my brush to create that uneven texture. Then I try to clean a bit of my brush and pull it to the right hand side, so the right is lighter than the left. As I move on to the left side, I'm going to build the darker value here I've added some quinciena into the mix. Leaving a little bit of space on the left, and this time, I cleaned my brush and added a little bit of CPA into the quinciena. And I just did the same tapping motion as before to create a textured surface. If there are any hard edges, I would then just soften it up with a clean damp brush or a little bit of color in a very thin consistency to just connect the sections. And I'm going to repeat the same thing for the bottom of the cake, starting with a medium consistency of titanium gold ochre. And here I clean my brush slightly, then pull the rest of the paint to the right hand side. So the right side of the cake will be the lightest part. Whenever I'm painting the cake, I'm still using the same motion as before, which is the tapping motion using the side and the tip of my brush. And while the surface is still damp, you can also add in a little bit more of the titanium gold ochre as extra texture if you would like. Now moving on to the left, I'm going to slowly build up the darker value with some quinciena doing the same motion, before I touch the edge of the left side, I'm going to add some Sepia into the mix, but I'm just using a light consistency here so the darker value isn't too overpowering. With the color that's left on my brush, I'm going to drag it to the bottom to give it a crust and also the top. And on the left side, because the surface is darker, you can add a bit more quinciena and sepia in the mix to create that crust. Going to slowly drag it to the right hand side, but I try to create lighter and thinner lines for the right, so the contrast won't be too strong. I still have a lot of my brush, so I'm going to paint the crust for the top layer as well. Going back to the bottom, I want this part to look slightly thicker. I'm going to smudge the edges using a clean damp brush and taking the excess to add more texture on top. So this is what I've done so far for the cake. And since we're going to be painting multiple strawberries, I'm just going to go straight back to the painting. To paint the strawberries, just like how I demonstrated it before. I'm going to start with a mix of vermilion and crimson lake in a very thick consistency. I want a light load on my brush, then I'm going to create an outline following the shape of the strawberry. You can see I'm making tiny curves as I do this. As I come to the bottom, I want to make sure that the ends are not too thick. In the demonstration, I dampen the surface at the center. But this time, I'm just going to use a clean damp brush to smudge and pull the color inwards. This is the second way of doing it, and then I'm going to manually blend the connection together instead of using that wet surface to help the paint travel a little bit quicker. After painting these stripes and leaving white in between, this time, I'm going to use a clean damp brush. Here I'm going to clean the paint I have left on my brush. Then I just took off the excess water with tissue so I can use this damp brush to smudge all the ends together to create a soft transition. Because I didn't dampen the area in the middle, the paint traveled a little bit less since this is more of a controlled way. As a result, the color is a little bit lighter. Here I'm just trying to pull the paint a little bit more inwards to brighten it. Then at the center, the surface is still a touch damp. I'm going to use a really light consistency of vermilion to just paint a little oval. There are two more strawberries. I'm just going to repeat the steps again for these last two strawberries, using a really thick consistency to paint the outline and also making those curved lines and making sure that the bottom end is nice and sharp or at least not too thick. Then using a clean damp brush. I'm going to pull the color inwards while leaving some white space in between. After this, I'm going to clean my brush again and get rid of any excess moisture, then just connect all those lines together, creating a softer center. Then once I'm done, I'm going to use a thin consistency of vermilion to paint the center. And again, I'm going to repeat this one more time for the last strubery that we can see. Because I want the left side to be a bit darker. Here, I've taken a little bit of a darker red with either indigo or CPM mixed into the red, and I just use a very thin consistency to mute and darken the color slightly. Then with the same color, I'm going to do the same for the strawberry as well. I'm just going to layer thin consistency of the dark muted red for the left side. I'm just going to clean this sharp edge here by smudging it. Then I'm going to go back to the cakes since the surface is now completely dry and I'm just going to take a little bit of the previous color mixture. This has a little bit of quinciena bit of titanium gold booker. I'm just going to paint dots as extra textures or air bubbles. I preferably like to hold my brush to the side. So if I accidentally press too hard, the ovals will somewhat be horizontal oval instead of vertical oval, if that makes sense. So what I'm thinking behind this is as cake rises and it creates and traps all these air bubbles inside of the cake, while it's still hot, the cake is really tall, but as it cools down, the cake will flatten out ever so slightly. So any strong air bubbles which were trapped in the middle will flatten out as well, ever so slightly. So this is why I prefer to make these dots either small circles or small horizontal ovals. Now, on the left side, because the area is darker in value, I added a bit of CEPI to add those air bubbles, and on the right hand side, I added more titanium gold ochre and use a lighter consistency as well. If there are any rough patches that seems too contrasting in my opinion, I like to soften it slightly using a clean damp brush to smudge some of the edges. 18. Cake 2: Cream: Next, I'm going to paint the cream and I want the color to be very, very light and subtle, but not completely white. I've just used a really light tint of titanium gold ochre with a touch of CPA. I'm just going to paint it very lightly with a light consistency and a light load on my brush. Painting the middle and the right hand side. Then as I get towards the left, I'm going to pick a bit of that red mixture, a little bit of indigo, and you can see I've mixed in some titanium gold ochre as well from the previous mixture. You can see how light this color is. It even just looks like a little bit of a dirty water. But here I'm just going to very, very lightly paint in between the strawberries. It's okay if I accidentally touch the strawberry as well as long as they're completely dry when you're painting this and that damp surface will activate a little bit of that red, which I don't mind. Once I feel like there's still too much contrast, then I'm going to build up the color ever so slightly. Here I've picked up a bit more titanium gold ochre for the center. I also try to connect them all together. You can also do little adjustments along the way. I felt like the strawberry on the left here has too much contrast between the outline and the inside. Here I use the consistency of that red to pull the color inwards a little bit more. Then I'm just going to increase the intensity and soften the blend towards the center. I'm also going to darken the bottom of this cake ever so slightly to add a bit more of a separation, but I don't want the lines to be too harsh, so I smudged it with a clean damp brush as well. Next, I'm going to add some really, really subtle textures on the cream. This is with a really thin consistency of titanium gold ochre. The reason why I'm doing this is because I don't want the cream to look completely flat, but I don't want the texture to fight with the texture of the cake as well. So I'm just painting this very lightly. On the left side, because this has a different base, I mixed in a touch of sepia. But again, I'm using a really light consistency. In my palette, it looks like lightly tinted water. 19. Cake 2: Topping: Then. In this lesson, we're going to paint the cake topping. I'm going to create the base first, which is the same method as how I painted the raspberry jelly base. But this time I'm going to use a different color because this is a different flavor. I'm starting with just vermilion on its own to paint the side. Then I'm going to take a little bit of crimson lake with a light consistency and quite a heavy brush load so I can spread it across the top section as well while leaving a little bit of white sliver for the highlights at the edge and between the two faces. How I defer this one from the previous raspberry is by using vermilion as the most dominant color, whereas the raspberries before, I used mostly Crimson Lake. The left side faded too much, so I added a bit of crimson lake to just darken it ever so slightly. Moving on to the top face, I'm going to add a little bit of indigo to the previous mixture, and I'm using a light consistency to introduce the color. Then while the surface is still damp, I added more of that vermilion with crimson lake mixture. As I get towards the right, because the base color is now completely dry, you can see the edges are much sharper, which is what I'm looking for because this sharp edge, just like the raspberry one will create that glossy texture. We're going to keep building on the darker values. Here I'm using a thicker consistency of the same mixture from vermilion and crimson lake. I'm also going to take a bit more to line on the top following the curvature of the cream and the strawberries. And to darken and mute the left side ever so slightly, I added a touch of indigo into the mix. I'm going to clean my brush completely because next we're going to paint the strawberries. We're only going to add the most detail to the strawberry in the middle, and I'm treating it the same way as how I treated the strawberry in the demonstration, starting with a light consistency of titanium gold ochre, that I'm following it up with a bit of vermilion mix into the titanium gold ochre and again, a light consistency while leaving a little bit of white space for the highlights on the top right hand side. Going to follow this up with the consistency of vermilion to darken the left side and making my brush strokes close together on the left side and as I go towards the right, I made the strokes a little bit further apart so they can resemble the dips of the strawberries where the seeds are. I'm still going to increase the value by adding crimson lake into the vermilion, again, using a thick consistency. This time I'm starting in the middle to paint the dips for the seeds. Then I'm going to use a mix of crimson lake with a bit of indigo to darken the bottom left side. I tried adding a bit more color, but it wasn't taking it because the surface was still damp, so I decided to dry it off with a hair dryer so I can work on a fresh dry surface where I'll be increasing a bit more of a darker value. I feel like I have enough information, so I'm going to start painting the strawberries at the back, starting with the left side. This is from a mix of crimson lake with vermilion and I'm using a light to medium consistency to paint a base first. The surface is quite damp, so I'm going to move on to the next strawberry first, so it has a bit more time to settle. I'm starting with a light to medium consistency of vermillion and I took off the excess paint on tissue so I can spread the rest of the color towards the edges. I'm also going to paint the base for the strawberry at the back. Again, I want this to be fairly light and I don't really want to touch too much with the other strawberries because I don't want to disrupt the colors. Strawberry on the left should be dry now. So I'm going to build on the darker values. This is from a mix of crimson lake with indigo and a touch of vermilion, darkening the bottom bit in the same way as how I painted the dark parts for the strawberry in front. But I made most of the brush strokes close together for the whole thing since I want this strawberry to look quite dark. As I paint towards the top, though, I increase more red, so this has less indigo, so the color is a bit brighter. I didn't like how the bottom looked, so I tried to take it off with a brush first, then I end up using my tissue since it was also puddling wet, so I can rework that area. This time, I'm going to use a mix of crimson lake and sepia in a thick consistency. I feel like that's enough for now. So next I'm going to work on the light strawberry on the right. With this, I'm using a light to medium consistency of vermilion. You can see as I'm painting that other layer, I've left out more white negative space. Then I'm going to work another layer using a bit of crimson lake. But this time the brush strokes are closer together on the bottom left. And lastly, for the strawberry at the back, I'm going to use a light consistency of both the red, bit of sepia and a little bit of indigo. I'm going to increase a bit more of the darker value to separate the strawberry at the back and the ones in front. Then using the same color, I'm also going to paint in the corner for the strawberry on the right as well. Lastly, for the topping, I'm going to paint this piped cream. I'm going to use medium consistency of titanium gold ochre, drawing a few lines following the curvature of the piped cream. I'm also going to do the same for the left hand side. I feel like a bit of that jam color would be reflected on the light colored cream. So I used a bit of vermilion to paint the bottom, still following the lines that I've painted earlier than to darken it ever so slightly. I also use that dark strawberry mixture, which has a bit of indigo crimson lake and bit of sepia. But I just use a really light consistency, especially on the right hand side. I quite like where this is going, but I feel like I need to increase the vibrancy for the jam. So I'm using a thick consistency of vermilion, and I'm also going to add some on the side, and I'm going to do some little adjustments for the cake, as well. 20. Cake 2: Shadows: Now, let's paint on the casheo. I'm going to treat this the same way as how I paint the casheo for the first cake. And for the color, I'm going to just add and go to this mixture that I already have on my palette, which has a bit of that red, starting with a light consistency, very close to the cake. And as I get towards the edges, I'm going to use a clean damp brush to create a softer transition. I'm going to get a little bit more of that ingo mix into the red to darken the color. Then I'm going to paint very closely to the cake while the surface of the cschto is still damp, and I'm going to help the paint move with my brush. Along the edge, I also want to introduce the color of the cake. I'm using a medium too thick consistency of titanium gold ochre here, so it has a bit of warmth and I'm just going to clean out the edges with my brush. If I need to take off anything, I'll just use either clean damp brush or tissue. Next, I'm going to use that same mixture from the cast shadow to paint the left side of the cake. And here I'm just using a very, very light consistency. This will make the shadow make more sense as the same tone matches with the tone on the cake as well. That's basically it. You can do some other adjustments as well. I'm going to add that same purple to some of the edges for the cake. Maybe there are a bit of space in between the cream and the cake. I'm also going to place it on the jelly and a tiny bit of texture on the cream as well. The caseto is now completely dry and I felt like the color is a bit too light. So I'm just going to do another layer of the same color, especially near the cake. Then I use a clean damp brush to soften the edges. I feel like I have enough information here, so that's it for the second cake. Let's move on to the third. 21. Cake 3: Sketch: And finally, onto the final cake, I'm going to paint the chocolate coffee cake or the mocha cake. I'm going to start by sketching out the little layers on the sides. At the bottom, I want to have another cookie crust, just like the first cake. Then I'm just going to divide up the layers for the filling. I want to have a bit of cake, bit of moose or cream, and a thin layer of chocolate ganache. This is similar to the raspberry pistachio, but I'm going to have two layers of cake instead of just one. At the top, I've extended the height a little bit by adding another layer for the chocolate pinach as the base for the topping. Then here I've added a blob. I wasn't sure if this was going to be cream or a meringue cookie maybe at the top, I'm going to create a flat cube for a wafer cookie. Then in front of this cookie, I'm going to add a few blueberries. I'm going to make the blueberries quite big and plump. So they're going to be oval. When I'm drawing overlapping objects, I'll just draw the full shape on top of one another. Then once I like the position, that's when I'll erase the overlap lines. Lastly, I'm going to add a small green leaf for decoration. Then I want to make sure the lines are clear enough and light enough for me to paint on. 22. Cake 3: Filling: We're ready to paint now. I'm going to start by painting the bottom, which is the cookie base. I'm going to use the same technique as how I've painted the raspberry pistachio cake, starting with a bit of yellow ochre. This is around a medium consistency, and I'm using the tip of my brush to do some tapping motion, but I'm making them a bit further apart. So there's a lot of space in between where I can introduce different colors. Like the other cakes, I painted the right hand side last. So I'm just using whatever scrap paint I have left on my brush, and I want to make sure that the color in the middle is the most vibrant. Here, I'm using some quinciena. And on the left, I'm going to use a light consistency of sepia. You can also mix it in with other browns, like the yellow ochre or mix the sepia with the quinciena. And whenever I'm adding different colors on the right hand side, I always want to make sure that I'm using a really light consistency. So the overall color stays quite light compared to the left side. I feel like I've covered quite a bit of space. So now I'm going to start adding the tinier dots or texture. For this, I used a mix of quinciana with a bit of CPA, and I just do little dots with the tip of my brush, so I don't accidentally cover too much space from the base. On the right hand side, though, I mixed in some yellow ochre as well to lighten the color, but I also used a thick consistency for a bit more contrast in the color. Next, I'm going to paint the cake. This is going to be a light chocolate cake, and I used a mix of quinciana with a little bit of sepia to get this color. Just like the previous cakes, I started from the middle. Then I pulled the rest of the paint with a clean damp brush to the right hand side. Now, for the left side, I've added more quinciana into the mix. Then right at the end of the left side, I'm going to use a light consistency of sepia. With a mixture that I still had left on my brush, I'm just going to add a darker value right at the bottom of the cookie base as well. The top layer will be another kick, so I'm going to repeat the steps like before to paint this one as well. After this, I'm going to paint in the coffee mousse or the coffee cream. For the main color, I'm going to use sepia. But on my palette, I touch a little bit of quinciana and yellow ochre as well. Because I want this color to be fairly light, I'm starting with a light consistency in the middle, pulling the paint outwards to the side with a clean damp brush. Then on the left side, I'm going to darken it slightly with a mix of sepia and quinciena. I'm using a slightly thicker consistency as you can see on the side. So the color is a bit more vibrant. I'm going to pull it to the center. Then on the side, I'm going to use a very, very thin consistency of CPA. At the bottom will be another layer of cream or moose, so I'm going to repeat the same steps, but I'm going to be fairly careful to not touch the cookie base too much. Once I'm done, I'm going to leave these two layers to dry, then I'm going to paint the dark chocolate pinache. For this, I'm using a mix of sepia and crimson lake, painting from the middle, then using a clean damp brush to pull it to the side. And on the left, I'm going to create a darker color by adding a bit of indigo into the mix. I don't mind that the mouse is still a little bit damp, but I try to not move the paint too much towards the top. And here I'm just trying to direct the paint where I want it to flow towards using my brush. I felt like the connection here is a bit too messy, so I used a clean damp to dry brush to pull the access paint off and you can at in the transition that way. Now, going back to the cake, since the first layer is dry, I'm going to add a bit more texture using a mix of yellow ochre and quinciana. And I'm just using a light consistency here because the previous layer was quite wet. So I see a lot of blooming that I want to break up with this extra layer. Now I'm going to add the darker textures on the cake, and for this, I used some of the brands that I had on my palate with more quinciena and a little bit of crimson lake. I'm just doing tiny little dots for the air bubbles. Now, to paint the texture on the left side, I'm using the same mix with added sepia, and I'm using a medium to light consistency. Now I'm going to add the crust slash shadow underneath and on top of the cake. So there's a bit of space in between the cake and the cream. For this, I'm using the same mix as I used before, but this has added sepia and crimson lake. I'm using a light load on my brush so I can use the very tip of my brush to create these very thin lines using quite a thick consistency. You can see the contrast here, then I'm going to soften the blend ever so slightly with a clean damp brush. Using the same color mixture, I'm going to use a very thick consistency, even thicker than before, to add extra dots to the cookie base, and I'm also going to darken the bottom, so the edge doesn't look too sharp. I'm going to increase the contrast on the darker sides on the left here. So I'm just going to smudge in a bit more of that quinciena mixture then I'm going to add on the darker dots as well. Okay. Next, I'm going to make the cookie base look a bit more dry and crunchy by separating the layer of the cream and the cookie base. So I use sepia with that little bit of crimson lake, and I'm going to use a thick consistency to darken just certain spots randomly, and this harsh separation will create that illusion. I feel like the color of the coffee cream is a little bit too muted and dark, so I decided to brighten the color slightly by using yellow ochre, starting with a medium consistency in the middle, then using a thin consistency on the left side and the right side. That's basically it. I'm just going to add some final adjustments, like little dots for the air bubbles for parts of the cake. I don't want to overdo this though, because if you have too much dark air bubbles, it might make the cake look too dry just like the cookie base. I try to limit this, and I'm just going to adjust any colors that I feel need to be a little bit brighter or more saturated and such. You can see because the cookie base has more of that darker dots and the texture is a bit more prominent. It looks a bit more dry compared to the cake. So this is why I try to not overdo the textures on the cake. 23. Cake 3: Blueberry: Since one of the main features here is a blueberry, and I feel like this is also fruit that is used in many desserts, I'm going to show you my thought process and how I painted this. Some people have messaged me before on YouTube saying they can't really figure out the roundness of the blueberries. And that's because when we're painting, we have to think about what's called cross contour lines and the shades are going to follow the cross contour lines in order to create that three dimensional form. So here as I'm sketching it out, I'm imagining that the light is coming from the top right as well. So I've darkened the bottom left of the blueberry. Again, following the curvature of the blueberry, and the flowery part on top called the Calix is facing away from the light, which is why I've darkened it as well. Here I've sketched out another one and this time I'm going to paint it, but the light is also going to come from the top right corner. For the base color, I'm going to use a mix of indigo with ultramarine finest so the indigo is a little bit brighter, starting with a light consistency. Then I'm going to slowly build on a darker value by using the same mix in a slightly thicker consistency to paint the bottom part. And as I'm painting the shadow, I'm following the curvature, as well as the cross contour lines in order to suggest the roundness of it. Once I'm done, I'm going to dry it off completely with a hair dryer and at an even darker value, I'm going to paint the Calix, and I'm using a very light load on my brush in order to control the flow. So it's like I'm drawing it on and then coloring it in. And on the side, I'm also going to line the bottom, then softening the blend with a clean damp brush. I've established the round form here, but now I'm going to make that texture of a blueberry because some parts of the skin has this whitish layer. And in order to suggest that, I'm going to use a thin consistency of the same mix, and I just kind of tap it in with my brush using a very thin consistency to create an uneven surface. And while the surface is still damp, I'm going to add on just indigo by itself in a thick consistency to darken the shadowy areas like hyena calix, as well as the bottom of the blueberry. And that's it. Now let's paint it on for the topping. 24. Cake 3: Blueberry Wafer: Now, let's start to paint the toppings. I'm going to paint the wafer cookie first because this is the largest element. I'm going to start with a medium to light consistency of yellow ochre, and I'm just going to cover this first part here. Then I'm going to pick up a little bit of this brown. I think this has some quinciena in it, and I mixed it with more yellow ochre and a thick consistency. Then I'm just going to.it in at the very corner where the wafer is hiding behind the blueberry and the meringue cookie in front. The bottom side of the wafer cookie will be darker. So I used yellow ochre with a bit of that quinciena on my palate. So the value is a little bit darker. But again, I'm just using a medium to light consistency and just going to spread it as a flat surface. And for the top, I use the light consistency of yellow ochre. That's it for the base of the wafer. I'm just going to dry it off a bit so it's not overly wet and then I'm going to let the paint settle completely. Meanwhile, I'm going to paint the base of the blueberries while I wait. Just like how I demonstrated it in the previous lesson, I'm going to paint the base color using a mix of ultramarine finest and digo. I'm going to mix quite a bit of paint for easy access here and I'm just going to use a light to medium consistency first. Since all the blueberries are touching and I want the base to be more or less the same, I'm just going to paint the base as a silhouette. Once I'm done with the base color of the blueberries, the wafer should be completely dry now. So I'm going to go back to it and paint the texture on top. I'm going to paint tiny little square lines in a row. And for the color, I'm using a mix of quinciana and yellow ochre. Can I'm sticking with this brush because it still has a really fine tip that I can work with and I can control. But you can also switch to a small brush. I'm going to show you how I use a smaller brush. It's just a bit easier to control the flow of the paint that way because you don't have as many bristles to hold a heavier load, and sometimes this load is a bit harder to control. But what's ideal is actually if you have a small very small flat brush, that way you can paint these squares with one single stroke for each. This is quite repetitive, so I'm going to skip to the final ones. And here I'm using a smaller brush, and again, it's just a bit easier to control the load, but I'm just painting more or less the same way, kind of making a few tiny little strokes to suggest some squares next to each other. This is optional, but for some of them, I like to add a little extra shadow, so it looks like the squares are kind of going inwards and it's deeper than the lines of the wafer cookie. I got a bit tired of this, though, so I'm not going to do it for every single square. It's just a really subtle suggestion. So after I painted a few, I'm going to add the layer of chocolate on the sides. And for this, I used the previous mixture from the inside or the filling of the cake. This is from a mix of sepia and a tiny bit of crimson lake. The top will be the lights area, so I just use a light consistency. Then for the bottom part, I'm going to use a slightly thicker consistency for a darker value. I'm going to darken the bottom side, and instead of using or adding a bit more color, I'm just going to smudge in that dark chocolate to add a little bit of value, then I'm going to dry it off completely. I'm going to build on the darker value. This is from a mix of Sepia, yellow ochre, and a little bit of quinciana in a light consistency. I'm painting from the darkest area to the lightest. So there's a subtle gradient from the bottom to the top of the wafer. I think I have enough detail for the wafer, it looks like a wafer cooking now. Going back to the blueberry, I'm using the same mix as before, but this has a bit more indigo, and I'm going to start separating those blueberries. I started with a medium too thick consistency. Then I use a clean damp brush to soften the blend and make this look round. I'm also going to paint the center just drawing it on with the tip of my brush. Whenever I'm painting tiny little areas, I'm using a very light load on my brush. This also makes whatever I painted dry quite quickly. So here, as you can see, the paint isn't going to travel into each other as I'm painting the blueberry at the back. I use a slightly lighter consistency. Then with a clean damp brush, I'm going to smudge it all. Then at the center, I'm going to draw on the calix. Now, as for the last blueberry, this I feel like would be the darkest blueberry since it's facing the other way around with the right side being the lightest. So I covered quite a bit of it in a light consistency. Then I added more indigo at the bottom. Then with the same consistency indigo, I'm also going to darken the first and second blueberry as well, right at the bottom. Then I'm going to use a clean damp brush to soften the blend and start adding the textures for the white layer of the blueberry. I feel like I still need to add more definition and more of the darker values. So once the blueberries are dry, I'm going to add a tiny little detail to deepen the calices and also define some of the textures as well as the shadows. That's it for the blueberries and wafer, you can adjust it until you're happy with the contrast and form that you have. The next lesson, I'm going to paint the layer of chocolate noche and the meringoki. 25. Cake 3: Chocolate and Meringue Cookie: Next, I'll be painting the chocolate ganache layer on top, and this is actually very similar to how I painted the jam on the previous cakes. But this time, we're going to use different shades of brown. The main brown here, I've used a mix of sepia with some crimson lake and a touch of quinciana. Again, I started in the middle and I used the clean damp brush to pull the paint to the right hand side, the right hand side is lighter on the left, I added more sepia in the mix. At the top, I'm going to use the same color mixture and I'm using a heavy load on my brush so I can spread the paint all across. And here I'm using a medium to light consistency, making sure to be careful around the edges and the little corners. And it's okay if you've left out some white negative space. But I want to make sure I leave out that little bit of highlight for the edge to separate the top face and the side face. As I pull the paint towards the right hand side, I just use a clean damp brush, so the right hand side will be lighter than the left. Now I'm going to darken the side a bit more. This is from mix of sepia and crimson lake and I think consistency, placing it in the middle. Then I'm going to use a clean damp brush to pull it to the sides. Then what what's left on my brush. I'm also going to paint the top with this, especially on the left side because I want the left side to be a bit darker. I'm going to keep building on the darker values, especially on the left side for more contrast using the previous mixture, but I've added more sepia, so the color is even darker and more rich. I feel like the curve of the chocolate ganache is too high on the right hand side, so I decided to bring it down a little. Then I set it in place by drying it, and I'm going to leave the chocolate ganache for now and move on to paint the meringue cookie. I want this to be coffee flavored. In the beginning, I was still unsure whether this would be cream or meringue cookie, but I decided to make it like a meringue cookie since I feel like this has a bit more body. The bottom is rounder, whereas I feel like cream would have a flatter bottom. Here I'm starting with some yellow ochre, and just like the blueberries, I want the bottom left to be darker than the top right. I'm going to dry it. After this, you'll see some textures. That's because I was still trying to attempt to make this into a cream. But after that, I realized that I don't think from the form, that it was possible to turn it into cream convincingly. This is where I finalized my decision and decided to turn this into meringue cookie. Added some dots to make this texture. Maybe it has some coffee flakes or something like that. I just use a really thin consistency of a dark brown. This is from CPO with a little bit of quinciena or you can also mix it with some yellow ochre if you want. Just using a light consistency because I want the specs to be quite subtle. Again, I'm also going to build the roundness of the form by adding the darker values at the bottom, just like the blueberries before. Maranoki is quite wet, so I'm going to leave it dry. Meanwhile, I'm going to repaint the chocolate ganache. Since everything's dry and the colors faded, I can keep building up on the darker values. And because I'm painting on a dry surface, you can see the edges are very sharp, and this sharp edge would help enhance the glossiness of the chocolate gnache. Lastly, I'm going to paint the leaf, I'm not going to introduce another color. Instead, I'm going to use my yellow ochre and mix it with the blues I already have on my palette in order to create a muted green. I start out by using the tip of my brush to paint the stem, then I paint on some rounded leaves at the top and on either side. While the surface is still damp, I created a darker green by adding more indigo in the mix and I'm just going to.in the bottom of the leaves to create a soft gradient. I 26. Cake 3: Shadows: Onto the last step of the third and final cake, I'm going to paint on the cschto and I'm going to treat this the same way as how I've treated the previous cakes. Here I'm using a mix of indigo with crimson lake. The purple is a bit bright. You can also mute it with a bit of vermilion as well. But I'm just going to use the colors for this cake. Just like before, I'm going to use a medium consistency, starting very close to the cake, and I'm going to slowly pull the paint outwards using a lighter consistency, and then eventually a clean damp brush, so the edges become softer. I'm going to add more of this color close to the cake while the surface is still damp. And I'm also going to add the color of the cake as well. Lastly, I'm going to bring a bit of the shadow color on the cake, and I'm just tapping in some of this color very lightly in a light consistency. And that's basically it for this final cake. 27. Closing and Class Project: Congratulations on completing this class. It was a bit of a long one, but I hope the lessons were useful for you and you enjoyed watching it. For the class project, I would love for you to create your own composition using the techniques I've shown you today. You can design your own cakes altogether, or you can also just paint along to the lessons that I've demonstrated in this class. If you're a beginner, you can also create cakes according to your level, whatever you're comfortable with. Or if you're an advanced painter, you can design your cake and your layout from scratch. Once you're done with your paintings, please don't forget to post it in the project section where you can share with me as well as other students. We can give each other encouragement, comments, likes, and I'm just so excited to see what the project session will look like this time. Hopefully, it'll be a very colorful and yummy one. If you enjoyed this class and found it useful and informative, I would really appreciate it if you leave a review and feedback, it really encourages me to make the classes that you enjoy and hopefully, in turn, it'll also encourage others to take this class as well. If you'd like to see more tutorials by me, I do have a YouTube channel called Nianiani where I post weekly watercolor tutorials or art related things. I post every Friday. And if you would like to see more Art by me, you can also follow me on my Instagram. My handle is at IG Underscore Nianiani you can also follow my TikTok at Nianiani art. And that's it for this class. Thank you so much for sticking right to the end if you're still here. All the best for your paintings. I can't wait to see it in the project section, and I'll hopefully see you again soon in the next class. Bye.