Pastry #1

» Posted by Lesley Spanos on Feb 6, 2009 in Desserts, Food and Wine, Medium, Oils, Step-by-step, Still Life | 1 comment

"Pastry #1" by Lesley Spanos. 5 x 5" oil and acrylic painting on canvas panel. ©2009, all rights reserved.

After the problems I had with the last painting, I needed a small victory, so I pulled out some photos I took over the weekend.

This is a chocolate almond pastry my husband had for dessert on Sunday.  I don’t eat sugar, so I sent him to the bakery with a request to get something pretty enough to paint.

Can’t go wrong with chocolate, right? Sunday was our own self-declared holiday, “Decadence Day,” and I wanted him to have something really yummy. To other Americans, it’s Superbowl Sunday, but our team was out of the playoffs early this year so we didn’t have anything to celebrate on the football front. I think there should be a national Decadence Day. Especially in our troubled times, there should be one day a year when we do nothing but pamper ourselves, a day of pure self-indulgence with no worries about buying gifts or handing out candy.  Just sleep late. Eat chocolate. Trade massages. Enjoy life!

Here are some photos I took along the way. One thing I should mention is that I’m just getting back into oil painting after a long absence, so I’m still feeling my way through the process. My way isn’t neccessarily the “right” way. It’s just how I manged to muddle through it.

Once again, I started with a canvas toned with acrylic paint in big, loose strokes, then drew a rough outline in ink. I tried to make it a chocolaty color.

Then I started painting the cherry and gold disk with oils.

Painting that gold disk was on was tons of fun! I think painting metal is like painting water – you just have to blur your eyes a bit and paint what you see.

In the house painting I just finished, I felt like I covered too much of the underpainting, so my goal this time was to leave as much of it exposed as possible. I didn’t thin the paint much until the end. At this phase I was still scrubbing tiny bits of thick paint into the canvas with a stiff brush, feathering out the edges so my underpainting showed through.

The thinned paint came at the end, when I was adding the chocolate and cherry drizzles. There was also confectioners sugar on the original pastry, but I chickened out when it came to adding it to my painting. At this point, I like what I’ve done, and I’m afraid of ruining it!

Once again, I think I might have overworked it a bit, but I’m still pleased with it. No struggles, no feelings of inadequacy. I breezed right through it, maybe two hours, tops. That doesn’t happen often, so I have to savor it when it does!

I popped it into a chunky gold frame. I like how the gold of the frame is duller than the “gold” I painted. It makes it look a little more “real” somehow.

Confession:
I did eat one decadent forkful of this dessert. It’s the first processed sugar I’ve had in about three years. I thought it was be amazing, but it was just way too sweet!