Introduction

In this tutorial, I will be showing you how to paint and illustrate a variety of different mini cakes, including a variety of topping types and icing types.

 

At the end, I will guide you through a full illustration of a blueberry mini cake with background and lighting and explain how to paint shadows and highlights using layer modes available in CSP.

 

Anatomy of a mini cake

A mini cake is what it sounds like- a cake that is much smaller than a regular cake. In fact, they usually are finished within a few bites! They are traditionally round but heart, square and slice shapes offer different aesthetics and possibilities for an appealing mini cake.

 

A typical two layer sponge mini cake consists of sponge cake(pink), cream fillings in between the cake bases(blue), and an assortment of toppings and garnish(yellow). An extra sponge layer means an extra frosting layer in between.

>>> Sponge cake

The sponge of the cake itself can have many flavour types: chocolate, dark chocolate, vanilla, caramel, red velvet, green tea or matcha, taro, rum, cookies and oreos, any fruit such as strawberry and orange, and so on.

 

To make the sponge of the cake visually indicative and convincing, usually using colours that are iconic or representative of the flavour should be enough. For example, most people will instantly discern dull green sponge cake as matcha flavoured.

 

Here is a full sheet of examples:

>>> Frosting

Frosting between sponge layers and frosting at the very top of the mini cake may or may not be of the same mixture. Common frosting types include whipped cream, buttercream, ganache and glaze. Visually and technically:

 

(1) Whipped cream and buttercream are generally fluffy and puffy and generate a lot of volume and visual texture to the cake. Sponge layers are typically sandwiched together with whipped cream or buttercream.

 

(2) Ganache can be either fluffy (whipped ganache) or runny and shiny. It could be between sponge layers, but it could also be poured/drizzled on the top of the mini cake.

 

(3) Glaze is poured at the top of the cake as it is a mixture of sugar and liquid thin enough to be directly runned on the top of the mini cake, creating a dripping effect down the sides of the mini cake. Note that both runny ganache and glaze are not used as a filling for layering cakes.

 

For painting the two (fluffy vs runny) frosting types, here are some tips!

 

(A) Unsmoothed fluffy frosting (whipped cream/buttercream/whipped ganache):

The sketch/silhouette should have plenty of round and upside-down teardrop shapes.

Because of the rounded, fluffy, curvy nature of the frosting’s surface, there will be small frosting forms that block a little bit of light throughout the entire frosting. These smaller frosting forms all cause some form shadows (planes turning away) and cast shadows (light blocked). These small shadows should also be painted as rounded, curvy shapes (2). (1) points to the gradient of the overall gradual falloff of light towards the right, as the frosting at the top is spherical in volume.

 

Note that the edge of the shadow closer to the light source will be softer as this side is caused by the gradual falloff of light (form shadow). The other edge that’s further away from the light source will in fact be a hard edge due to that side being part of a cast shadow. To learn more about form and cast shadows, I recommend learning about ‘edges’ in art from YouTube videos! :)

(B) Runny glaze/ganache:

For a runny, drizzled, trickling visual effect, the silhouette should be tapering in as the liquid runs further down. An optional design is rendering the ends of the liquids as round blob shapes as shown. Depending on the angle at which you are viewing the tapering ends, you may see less of one side of the tapering end as shown. Note the small perspective tip!

>>> Topping

 

Toppings, not including frosting topping, could be anything sweet or confectionary. This includes whole fruits and fruit pieces, chocolate bars and chocolate balls, macarons, merengues, marshmallows etc. As an example of painting toppings, I will go through how to paint meringues.

 

Assuming light comes from the top left:

 

1. First, sketch a wide teardrop outline for the silhouette of the meringue. At the bottom, try and create a bumpy texture as shown, as they will serve as the basis for curvy shadows for planes facing away that don’t get much light. For the lineart, I use dae_pen4. I sometimes also use 'dream PEN' by 'RengMyang'. Both of them are free on csp assets!

 

2. On a layer under the sketch, choose a base colour (i went for very light beige) and use an opacity dense brush/pen to block in the base colour (I prefer to use lasso/bucket combo).

3. On a layer with ‘multiply’ layer mode that is clipped into the base colour, choose a light colour that you want the shadow to be tinted with. Use the lasso tool and bucket (for sharp edges) to create sharp curvy form shadows for planes facing away, leaving planes facing towards the light shadowless. Try to make the light and shadow shapes somewhat equal in area.

4. Now, we will add a bit of colour detail to the shadow. Click ‘lock transparent pixels’ for the layer with the shadows. Now, using a more blendy brush such as the default ‘dense watercolour brush’ at ~70 brush density, choose a darker but slightly more vibrant colour and brush over the shadows. Make the leftmost shadow slightly lighter than the rest because technically it would be getting a little more light due to closer proximity to the light source.

5. I like to add a gradient representing the overall gradual falloff of light towards the right, as meringues are essentially spherical in volume. On a layer clipped onto the base colour, choose a colour that is slightly darker than the base colour. Use the airbrush tool ‘soft’ at 30-50 brush density and brush from right to left lightly. Because the ‘multiply’ layer mode is turned on for the shadows layer, the shadows will naturally always be darker despite this gradient.

6. For final details, I use the dense watercolour brush on a layer above everything and just try to imitate a burnt effect by making the top and bottom browner. I also add some saturated light blue and brighter beige tones between the light and shadow forms to imitate subsurface scattering. This makes the merengue pop with vibrancy. Make sure not to overdo this. Subtle>excessive as always :) I also sometimes brush in additional colours just to make the colours interesting and appealing.

Later in the ‘painting mini cake’ sections you will learn how to paint blueberries and egg rolls.

Designing your own mini cake

>>>Composition and placement of toppings

 

After thinking about your desired:

(1) mini cake shape

(2) sponge flavour

(3) frosting and toppings

... it’s time to visually plan out the cake’s visual appeal! I like to draw thumbnails or simplified illustrations to get the idea laid down on paper.

 

For a visually appealing mini cake, the toppings should be placed in a way that the mini cake radiates completeness and harmony. This means the toppings of the cake should not be too scarce in quantity, should not be placed awkwardly such as too far away from each other etc. Of course, sometimes any layout can be made appealing.

>>>Designs and thumbnail examples

 

I recommend going on the internet or Pinterest for more cake designing inspirations and ideas. Here are a couple just to help you think about different flavours and designs!

>>>Designs and thumbnail examples

 

I recommend going on the internet or Pinterest for more cake designing inspirations and ideas. Here are a couple just to help you think about different flavours and designs!

(1) Mini cake with upside down ice cream cone: This cute design portrays a caramel flavoured ice cream dripping down the sides of the mini cake, with colourful sprinkles and smooth meringues.

(2) Mini cake with macarons and rose petals: This elegant design portrays several mint macarons, dark red rose petals and chocolate swirls hugging a chocolate and mint sponge cake.

Mini cake painting demo

Now, let’s paint a blueberry chocolate mini cake! It will be a chocolate sponge cake with vanilla whipped cream, blueberries and a vanilla eggroll. The centre fillings will be caramel, blueberry and matcha flavoured.

 

First, sketch a rough cylindrical shape to map out the overall shape and perspective of the cake. The higher the camera/viewer is, the more you can see and thus the 'taller' the top spherical plane would be. Also, the higher the camera/viewer, the more tapered inwards the cake becomes towards the bottom. Fore more perspective basics and practice, I recommend starting off with 'drawabox' videos or Marc Brunet's videos on youtube, as well as art books. For this cake, I decided to go with a stand rather than a plate for presentation. For the stand, I sketched in a stand with a flat round top and a bulb base.

Now, sketch in a fluffy textured frosting for the vanilla whipped cream, as well as a few blueberries and egg roll with stripes and frosting. Blueberries are round and its top is spiky and somewhat resembles a multi-pointed star as shown. Make sure the blueberries actually look like their situated inside the frosting by cutting some of the bottom part of the blueberry, portraying the bottom parts as being blocked by the frosting forms at the front. Whatever topping I use, I also like to scatter some across the entire setting, such as on the sides of the cake, on the stand, and in the background for an interesting illustration. Finally, sketch in the background. In this case, I chose the cake to be situated on a wooden table with a table with a table cloth and fork near the cake, thus visually setting up a 'ready to eat' scenery.

Time to block in the base colours. Turn the opacity of the sketch to 20%, that way you can see where to lay in the base colours, but not let the line art distract you in any way. On new layers below the sketch layer(s), either use the lasso tool and bucket or an opacity dense brush to block in the base colours of the cake. I used the lasso and bucket tool and went over with a brush to make sure edges are smooth and clean. I made an individual base colour layer for everything that's unique- one layer for the sponge of the cake, one for the glaze, one for the top frosting, one for the blueberries, and one for the egg roll. This will make painting with clipping masks easier later on.

On a layer clipped onto the base colour of the cake's sponge, use a watercolour brush such as the default 'dense watercolour' brush to paint across the bottom with a saturated reddish tone (the second swatch). Then go over with a colour that's of a similar hue to the base tone but much darker (the third swatch). Leave a bit of the saturated red showing through. I find that this creates a nice, appealing and interesting gradient towards the bottom of the cake. Also, the cake curves inwards slightly at the bottom, so essentially this gradient represents the corresponding form shadow. Switch to the other base colour layers, create new clipped layers and paint similar details (I will go through the colours for each topping).

For the centre frosting of the cake, create a new layer above the previous clipped layer and base layer of the cake's sponge, and clip it also. Paint horizontal stripes across the cake in a somewhat messyish fashion so that the frosting does that seem artificially placed, as nothing is perfect in nature. The top row of swatches is the base colours of each frosting flavour (caramel, blueberry, matcha). This is the value under lighting. The second row represents the saturated line between the light forms and shadow forms caused by subsurface scattering as mentioned before. The last row is the shadow value. I like to make the shadows more orange in hue due to assuming a cool light source. Paint this in a similar way as how I explained to paint the bottom gradient of the cake's sponge earlier.

The way that I paint the vanilla frosting is similar the things I painted earlier, but I used more colours this time and took into account ambient lighting from the dark brown glaze right below the frosting. I started with a light pink/beige base colour, and then painted in light greyish pink curvy shadow forms across the entire frosting form. Then I went over the shadow forms with a light cyan/green colour, which is the saturated colour due to subsurface scattering in this case. Then I went over them with an orangey yellow colour, which makes the green appear blue tinted. These two colours complement each other well and makes the frosting pop with vibrancy and energy. Finally, on some shadows that are very close to the brown glaze, I painted in some dark brown tints, as some light may bounce from the glaze, into the shadows. This reflected light is known as ambient light, and on matte surfaces they are less prominent, but I disregard this usually :O (I should not do that haha)

The frosting inside the egg roll is also painted with a similar palette. For the white stripes indicating the flavour of the egg roll as vanilla, I used a beige + red brown + darker and less saturated brown (base + saturated + shadow) colour palette. As you can tell, I generally use 3-4 colours for painting objects, one base colour, one or two saturated colour for subsurface scattering, and one or two shadow colour.

At this point, I like to create a new layer at the top of everything and outline the silhouette of the mini cake to clarify and set in stone the where the edges are. I often go for a a dark orange colour for the line art as it gives out a premium look.

 

For the blueberries, make sure to paint following the colour of the blueberry (using rounded motions) as blueberries are spherical and form shadows follow the curvature of the form in 3D space in this case. Colour wise, I experimented with a lot of purple, blue and green tints. For the highlight, I created circular or teardrop shapes using a bright light orange/peach/pink tone, which stands out conspicuously on top of the purples, blues and greens of the blueberries. As you may have noted, I like to pair blue and peach colours together often as they complement each other very well.

I also painted in some ambient lighting into the form shadows of the glaze, using a brighter orange tone.

Establishing lighting using layer modes

For major cast shadows, create a new layer above every colour layer. Click on layer mode and set it to 'mulitply'. This layer mode 'multiplies' every pixel with the colour chosen so that what's underneath is always darker and is very useful for painting shadows in the long run (over multiple different colours). It even darkens the line art colour if you decide to put this layer above the line art layer, so there would be no need to constantly darken the line art to avoid the line art being too light in certain places.

I chose a light brown colour as I want my shadows to be warm-tinted. I decided the light source will be becoming from the top left corner. Note that cast shadows curve in a way that follows the contouring of the form. ie. cast shadows wrap around the object that it's on. You can clearly see this on the shadow casted onto the cake by blueberry that's going to be on the stand. I also painted some cast shadows on the glaze caused by light being blocked by the frosting. This step really clarifies the lighting conditions surrounding the cake.

For the highlight of the glaze, I used the 'overlay' layer mode, chose a dull pink tone, and used a sharp pen to create the swiggly highlight shape on the left side of the glaze. Then I clicked on 'lock transparent pixels', used a soft airbrush, set the colour as 'transparent' and lightly brushed from the right towards the left for an interesting fading highlight effect. For some reason I prefer this over using the 'soft' eraser.

After painting the base colours for the stand and background, I went back to the mulitply layer and added more cast shadows for the remaining blueberries, as well as the shadow casted by the cake and stand. Remember to keep the angle of the shadows somewhat consistent for a more convincing illustration! ^-^

Remember to add saturated lines on a layer under the shadow layer for the cast shadows as well!

Thank you !

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learnt something from this tutorial, whether it's cake designing ideas or painting techniques and methods. I know this tutorial isn't perfect, but I'm always trying to improve my way of organising things for the viewers and the way I explain concepts. I hope this tutorial also sparks some passion for food art, food stickers and so on!

 

If you want to check out more illustrations by me, you can check me out @pufen__ on instagram. ^0^