Introduction

Hello, Miyuki here! As the submission of September's Monthly TIPS, I've decided to draw food illustration themed TIPS. I'm always interested of drawing food, it's really stress relieving or even just for practice painting digitally. As an art student, it is good for myself to stepping out of the comfort zone by trying something different medium or different styles of drawing.

Little bit of disclaimer, I'm quite awkward when comes into explaining things since English is not my native language yet I'm still learning. I apologize if you have a difficult time to understand my vague explanations.

In this tutorial, I'm gonna draw two of my favorite dishes. I'll be drawing cream stew and dessert platter, obviously a highkey sweet addict hahaha-

 

So let's begin starting from the youtube video below:

Youtube Speedpaint

The video below shows the timelapse of painting process of the illustration. Real time taken 3 hours, 27 minutes.

1. Base colors

First of all, since I did the sketch on my Ipad, the sketch layer's not transparent as it was imported from an drawing application that supports importing file in ".CLIP" format.

 

In case of this, click the "Magic wand tool" selecting the outer area of the sketch. Invert the selection, fill the selected part with gray then move the gray base below the sketch. Deselect the selection area, click the sketch layer, go to edit, click "Convert brightness to opacity".

 

As seen from the video, the sketch originally colored red turns translucent black-gray as you can see the base. Lock the sketch, recolor it with lighter gray. Add a new layer fill it with a solid color light grey, clip it to the base layer below. Rename it to "Bowl layer".

 

Add a new folder, add a new layer inside the folder, this folder will be used as the color layer. Each layer has another layer seperating components depends on the color. For easily distinguishing each part of food along with shade them tidy and neat.

Example above:

• Yellow-Green: Lowest layer, to place melon slices

• Base: The stew and pudding

• Layer 15: Caramel syrup exclusively for the pudding

• White: Whipped cream on the top of pudding

• Red : Strawberries and Raspberries

• Seeds: Strawberry details

• Green: Broccoli and kiwi layer

• Orange: Carrots and Peaches

• Cream: Toasted bread slice and cake rolls

• Cream 2: Cream filling for roll cakes

• Hammies: Hamsters for decorations

2. Shading

For shading, I'm pretty much using a customized tool i made called "Grain fluffy", basically just a custom version "Running color edge watercolor" with additional brush tip and texture.

For extra details or textures, I'm also using a textured soft airbrush called grainy, specifically used on toast and cake roll from "Cream" layer

The results will look like the picture shown below

Im also hide-unhide the sketch layer often to define the shape for each project layer per layer.

I prefer shade the middle and front first, that doesn't really need much details to add. The layers I shade first are the "Cream","Yellow","Green" and "Orange".

 

Except for the "Red" layer that places strawberries and cherry. The strawberries need quite a crisp shading, so in this part I'm also using "G-pen" tool to make a hard shading then soften it by using "Grain fluffy".

After blending and softening the solid darker color, keep continuing adding details like the seed holes using "Grain fluffy" brush.

Next part I shade are "Cream 2" and "White" layer, using the same watercolor brush, using the shade color then belnd it with base colors with a little of lighter color.

 

Now I'm finished on the front and middle objects. I started shading for back objects such as "Yellow-Green" or melons,"Red" for the blackcurrants part only.

 

I'm also changed the bowl color then merge to the base layer.

I went back to the "Green" layer to add a bit of darker green color adding more depth.

 

I'm done shading a lot of parts for the food, I also did some reshaping, and cleaning the "Bowl" Layer as well. Not to forget shading the bowl layer also.

Finally the last but not least part of shading, the hamsters as decorations.

3. Finishing touches

Finishing touches, my favorite part of drawing process! For finishing touches, add a new layer to clip below to the Food folder. Pick the "Grainy" tool, then airbrush some parts with reddish orange with "overlay" blend mode.

 

After that, click the "Textured pen tool" to sharpen some certain parts of the drawing such as the potatoes, carrots, roll cakes, and most of edges present in "Multiply mode" with sepia/light brown colored brush in an opacity around 69%. Any color works well depends on your preference

This step is optional, but i personally love textures put to food drawings as it make them look crisp and detailed. That's why I prefer draw food drawings traditionally than digitally.

 

So I've added a "Paper" texture I've created on June 2020's TIPS. (Link below) Then I've adjusted it so it won't look too large by grain size or too intense on the opacity. Low opacity will enhance a nice texture above your drawings around 18-35% layer opacity

And Voila! There's all for the my tips, hope it helps you drawing food art! ^^)