Introduction

Hello and welcome to my tutorial on painting these over-the-top mini cakes. I spend a lot (many would say too much) of time looking at amazing cakes on Pinterest, and this is a great excuse for trying to paint some. I hope it’s useful, and I’ll try to be as thorough and detailed as usual.

Settings

First things first, I set up a new document measuring 30x20 centimeters, 300 dpi, and name the first layer “Sketch”.

Initial Sketch

First I do a really rough sketch using the Lighter Pencil, in a bluish color. This is really just to get an idea of where I want to place the different parts, and I spend maybe five to fifteen minutes on this type of sketch, depending on how many times I change my mind about the design.

Perspective Ruler

First, I need to get the perspective right, which means using a perspective ruler. For this tutorial I’m going to use a 1-point perspective ruler.

Now a box appears, as seen above. I tick off 1-point perspective, and click OK.

You get a set of purple lines. Now for a more thorough walk through on how to use the perspective rulers and all the little handles and stuff, I suggest checking out my tutorial Rulers and Paintings pt. 1, found here: https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/3053 In this tutorial I’ll stick to the bare necessities, only showing off what you need for this particular painting.

As for positioning your perspective ruler, try to match up the guides to some of the most “important” lines in the picture. Here I’ve tried matching it up with the sides of the box, setting the horizon line far above the canvas.

As you can see here, I’m not very talented at freehand perspective, which is exactly why I make a refined sketch afterwards.

Initial Shapes

I start off by lowering the opacity of the initial sketch. Then I pick a red color, and go over the sketch, in a much more detailed manner. Sometimes I’ll create new layers, so that I can easily erase the necessary parts, for a neater end result. I’ll use the perspective ruler a lot, especially to get the initial shapes, as seen in the picture above.

Now as for the lid of the box, I want it to be at a different angle. Therefore I select my horizon line, left click on it, and select Add Vanishing Point. That should give you a new set of lines. Adjust and place it as you see fit.

Here I’ve drawn in the lid, after having readjusted the vanishing point, at least a dozen times. Trial and error is really my only friend.

Flowers

I find a reference for the flowers on Pinterest, and play around with it for a while. As for the second flower I just copy paste the first one and adjust it a little with free transform.

Now the pearls, I select the Figure Tool, and add a new layer. I add in some uniform circles, creating new layers as I see fit, for easier erasing of overlapping parts. I’ve also added a little bit of ribbon jotting out from beneath the box.

Detailing the Cakes

The cakes aren’t supposed to be these flat boring things, so let’s get to the detailing of them. I lower the opacity a bit, add a new layer, and start from the back. This is the part where you really get to be creative, seeing as you can do pretty much anything with these tiny cakes! If you’re lacking ideas, just go on Pinterest and search “petite four cakes”, and your bound to find something neat!

Two rows of delicious cakes.

Here all three rows of cakes are done, and I think the sketch is looking pretty decent. Enough so, to turn it into line art.

Turning Sketch to Line Art

This step is really rather simple. First you select all of your sketch layers, and throw them into a folder. Copy the entire folder, and hide the original folder. Then merge all of the sketch layers into one big layer. Trust me, it’ll make sense later on. Now lock the transparency on the layer (you can remove it from the folder if you want, and then delete the folder). Pick a dark color (sometimes I go for black, sometimes something slightly toned). For this I’m going to go with a dark chocolate brown, almost black, but not quite. Then click the paint bucket tool in the top menu.

The above shows the result.

Shading

Now comes time for the shading. Start by copying the line art layer, and hide the original. I create a new folder for it, just to keep track of it, but its visibility needs to be turned off.

 

Now using a semi-transparent brush of some sort, start blocking in shadows as you see fit, directly on the (new) line art layer. I use the same color as I did the line art, giving nice smooth transition between lines and shading.

 

I use a couple of different blenders, depending on whether I want texture or not, but seeing as there are tons of blenders out there, use whatever you see fit.

 

Above you can see a small snippet of the box, painting in this way.

Keep in mind that this is not coloring the piece, it’s only about creating values. Even though you know something is supposed to have a dark color, you are not to color it entirely. This is the shading part, we’ll get to the coloring later.

Now the cake portion of the picture is done, and all that’s left to do is the flowers, ribbons, lid, and a little more shading on the table.

And that’s the finished shading of the picture.

Coloring

I start by flood filling a new layer, with this bright purple color, then set the layer’s blending mode to Overlay. It looks a little too harsh though, so I lower the opacity down to 25%. This is mainly to give the shading a tint, instead of just the slightly dull brown.

Then on top of that layer, I create another and set it to Multiply. This will be our base colors and main highlights. I use the G-pen for blocking in colors at this stage, and blend them using different types of blenders, just as I did the initial shading. The screenshot above shows a finished cake.

Seeing as these are supposed to be over-the-top fancy cakes, I’ve added some pattern brushes here and there. Some are found in the Materials store, some came with the program, they all look very fancy. Usually I set the blending mode to Add Glow as I paint them on, giving a little extra shine to the cake in question. Think about all those fancy cakes you see on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and the likes: This is your time to do stuff like that, without messing up your kitchen!

I don’t color in any specific order, if anything, I color things rather randomly. Getting to the box, I want it to be really shiny, but it also has some pretty sharp edges, which makes it a little harder to get the light right. I start off by painting in the base color as with everything else, then switch the layer back into Normal mode.

Then I select all the bits and pieces of box, and switch the layer back to Multiply mode. Now I can both see where the highlights are supposed to go, and I’ve got them selected so that I can’t paint outside of the lines.

Finishing off with a flower pattern set to Overlay, this box ends up looking like this.

As a final step, I rearrange the image a little, select all the blank pixels and give it a nice brown gradient.

Finishing Touches

To create a little more unison between the colors, I add a soft rosy layer on top, setting the blending mode to Screen, and lowering the opacity to 15%. I’ve also adjusted the initial Overlay layer, to 50%, instead of just 25%.

 

Also I did a little correction on jagged edges, but that’s about it. I call it done!

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