Susan's Cupcakes

  

    Everyone who knows me well, knows that I bake. Cookies are my first love, and we will get to that later this year. When my son operated Shack Man Glass Studio & Gallery, I baked 150 cupcakes every month for  First Friday Art Walks. I bravely take the same risk experimenting with cupcake recipes that I take with painting. I believe if you don't try it, then how will you know? In honor of my birthday month and in memory of  the1,000's of cupcakes I've baked, here is a tutorial for creating   cupcake love.

everything begins with an abstracted underpainting on a 5 x 7 sheet of your favorite paper surface.
I painted 4 or them together. In my demos, I always use green tape so that you can see the taped borders throughout the steps. I added a little tape to mask out my confetti pieces and painted my cupcake. I scraped with the back of a small paint brush to expose underpainting as jimmies.

I painted my ground and used a dry stamp to lift the paint from the ground. I used a piece of drywall mesh to scrub through for my cake background.

I also brushed in a little shadow for my cupcake and added highlights. I pulled all the tape revealing the confetti and a a beautiful preserved white border.

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cupcake love 2

Same techniques used here. I reverse stamped a background behind my birthday candle. I removed the tape and added a flame to my candle, I had a perfect little halo surrounding my candle flame.        I also thought my cake dots were too small so I stamped bright colors over them with the back of       a #2 Black Warrior pencil.

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cupcake love 3

 

This is designed and painted the same way. The background is reverse stamped - using a dry stamp to lift the paint off the paper while wet. I painted a striped table cloth for my cupcake and added two cherries because two is better than one!

Add a few shadows on the tablecloth and the cupcake paper liner and pull all of the tape to reveal a great little painting.

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cupcake love 4

I used the same techniques as in previous cupcakes. I lifted the candy dots from the wet paint to reveal the candy dots. I used the drywall mesh to scrub in a background. And then I added a stamped phrase to my painting.

There's no one like you!

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And here is a great idea

for your cupcake paintings

Mount the painting on a folded 5x7 blank card and send as a birthday card. Don't forget to sign your painting and add a note on the back this is an original painting/card and ready to be framed in a 5 x 7 frame. How's that for a card and gift as one?

Peach Love

All small art projects begin with 5x7 inch sheets of paper. Three 5 x 7 papers were painted in this project.

Tape the sides of your paper to protect a white border around the painting. The amount of image and white paper you want is determined by you but keep it consistent to make a cohesive body of work. Always work on 3 – 6 papers at one time. This allows you to move from one painting to the next while  trying a variety of options to resolve the problems, and prevent you from becoming overly committed to any one while you work.

The primary tools used in this series are a brush, brayer, pallet knife, rubber stamp and a roller from adding machine tape or other paper rolls. I use mat medium to provide transparency and fluidity to my acrylic paints. I always start with thin layers. I chose a secondary triad, orange, green and purple for my pallet. Orange is the dominant color.

Begin by coating the papers with paint to create a light orange base. The mat medium will help this dry quickly.  Drop a few drops of acrylic ink or fluid acrylic paint in a deeper orange or red orange.

Use a brayer to roll over the deep color to spread out the paint marks. Allow the beautiful textures and uneven color that occurs to remain.

 I’ve used two stamps for these painting. Generally I like found objects and stamps I carve myself, but in this instance a store bought stamp was used. Note that I am careful not to ink or expose the entire stamp, preferring to fracture it slightly.  Test the stamp with your paint or ink to determine what the right consistency will be. Randomly stamp the papers.

When stamping is dry, use a chalk or other removable tool to sketch peaches on papers. 

I use a hard light gray pastel.  

With a paper roller I stamp a rich deep purple randomly into my design and over the surface the papers. The stamping will create some raised surfaces that will show through the added layers.

I added small details to some parts of the peach to define highlights and shadows.

I’ve added leaves to my peaches and a pit to the sliced peach. Build your browns from the existing colors on your pallet.

My last detail is to paint a softer lavender around the peaches and leaves.  I’ve scratched into the wet paint to lift some of the color while wet. The painting on the far right has reverse stamping – dry stamping on wet paint lifts the paint to reveal the under painting. I added a few more color stamps to one, and then painted shadows under the peaches to ground them.

Finally - remove the tape and reveal the paintings.

Peach Love

Discoveries

• Stamping can be applied in a variety of ways. This was an exercise in stamping heavy, creating raised surfaces that add texture and are exposed through the second layer.
• Reverse stamping to lift the paint off the surface and expose the color underneath.
• Building browns from the colors already on the pallet creates a unity of your colors.

Have fun with your SMALL Art Project.