How To Draw A Cake With Watercolor And Colored Pencils

Keep your graphite marks as light as possible. Please note that I’ve intensified the lines in my process images for your convenience. Your lines may be barely visible.

As we decided in the previous step, the cake should have three biscuit layers with cream sections in between. Keep the principles of perspective in mind while marking the borders!

With the form in place, I add the rough shapes of the tangerine slice, nuts, and blueberries that decorate the top of the cake.

I refine the elements on the top plane. I also add some chocolate shavings to fill the space between the nuts and berries.

With an eraser, I soften the borders between the layers. Straight lines don’t look natural – they should have some twists and turns. The same is true for the outer edges of the cake and the general contour line.

You can add some details of texture – a piece of cake usually has a porous look and feel. Vary the hollow openings so that you have some smaller and larger ones. However, don’t overload the drawing with too much visual information.

Painting the Under Painting with Watercolor

With our sketch in place, we’re ready to create a tinted underlayer of watercolor. This step will help us to save time before we proceed to colored pencils. The great advantage of watercolor is that it quickly covers the surface, so no specks of white paper are showing through the applications.

Using watercolor may be intimidating for some artists. It’s no wonder since this medium requires skill and practice to create more or less complicated art pieces. If that’s true for you, don’t worry. Everything that we’ll be doing in the following steps is beginner friendly.

See also: Watercolor Painting Lessons

First, soften the graphite marks with a kneaded eraser. It is almost impossible to remove excess graphite after the watercolor is applied and dried.

I start with the darker layers of the cake. With the larger round brush, I moisten the area with clean water before applying the paint. Burnt Umber is my choice for the biscuit layers, the top plane of the cake, and the chocolate shavings.

I apply Yellow Ochre to the lighter cream layers. The paint is heavily diluted with water so the value is very light. I address the nuts with this color too.

I moisten the borders between the lighter and darker layers of the cake to create a soft transition.

I cover the tangerine slice with Golden. Then I add Indanthrene Blue to the berries. Be careful – allow the surrounding areas to dry before applying the contrasting blue paint to prevent bleeding and desaturation.

As you can see, the first layers of paint looks faded and light.

Next I’m going to repeat the same actions as in the previous step. The exception is that the paints won’t be as diluted. The brush is moderately wet. This time however, I don’t moisten the area before applying the watercolor.

I make the vertical planes of the cake slightly darker than its top, adding more Burnt Umber and Yellow Ochre respectively. I assume that the upper surface is well lit, and the right vertical side is the darkest. The location of the light source and the character of lighting in your image is up to you.

I use the smaller brush to leave dots or separate strokes while the area is still wet. This trick helps to create a grainy or porous texture of the biscuit layers.

I cover the berries with another layer of Indanthrene Blue. When lightly applied, this color can be a nice addition to other areas of the artwork.

With Golden and a small brush, I refine the details of the tangerine. I also add some strokes of this color to the lighter layers of the cake.

Now the under painting is complete. However, I have an idea of how to add a painterly feel to our artwork. We’ll create expressive paint splashes!

First, we’ll need a protective stencil that roughly repeats the shape of our cake, including the adornments on top. You don’t have to be completely precise with its size and silhouette.

The easiest way to make a stencil is to put a sheet of thin (printer or tracing) paper on top of your artwork. Such paper has a level of transparency, so you’ll see the silhouette of your drawing through the upper layer. Outline the rough contour with a pencil and cut it out. Then put the stencil on top of the cake.

In the image below, you’ll find my artwork covered with the stencil. With the stencil in place, the cake is protected from being stained. As you can see, the stencil is doing its job successfully!

After the stencil is in place, take a bristle brush and dip it into water. (It may be a good idea to change the water in your container to make sure it’s clean.)