"Chocolate Caramel Lava Cake" by Lesley Spanos. Oil painting on 5 x 5" canvas on panel. Copyright © Lesley Spanos 2009, all rights reserved.
The hubby has fully embraced the idea of me painting desserts and him eating them. Thanks to his enthusiastic purchases, I already have hundreds of dessert photos and a backlog of subjects awaiting me! There was this chocolate caramel lava cake he brought home last week, followed by an individual heart cake dipped in white chocolate and swirled with dark chocolate. Then there was the decadent chocolate mousse multi-serving heart-shaped layer cake we both picked out on Valentine’s Day. It had some pretty glazed berries on top that caught the light beautifully, so I’m really looking forward to painting that one sometime this week.
As always, here are some shots taken along the way:
The canvas, toned with acrylics. I toned a handful of these a couple of weeks ago, which is why all the recent ones have been pretty much the same color. This one’s a little dark. I find I like them best when they’re a couple of steps lighter than my darkest shadow color.
The drawing is done with waterproof ink, directly on the canvas.
That bit of caramel on the top was a PITA to do, but I learned a lot and next time it will be easier. What I wasn’t getting at first is that it’s a little translucent, and a tiny bit of light shines through it.
Because the underpainting was too dark, I had to scrub in a halo of light around the cake so it wouldn’t be lost in the background.
This was my first fork. Yes, I was a virgin, but now that I have forked, I must admit that I liked it! It was much less painful than I thought it would be. Just a matter of observing the colors and painting what I saw.
I’ve also been forced to scrub a haze of lighter color on the foreground.
Note to self: Next time make the underpainting lighter!
Added some highlights, and we’re done! It actually looks much better in person than it does in a photo. We’re going to keep this one – I promised it to the hubby for Valentine’s Day.
