Piece of Cake

Cupcakes. That was the theme of my watercolor class last night. I sense your skepticism but I was curious. I knew the theme was pop art, but I wasn't quite sure where this was going because I thought (disappointingly) that they were treats for our class.  Then our instructor set the stage by introducing us to artist Wayne Thiebaud. I began to see these cupcakes in a new light, literally.

I started to see the geometric patterns and shapes he perfected. I saw the bold cast shadows creating hyper-realistic settings.  The use of color to convey shape, pattern, texture, frosting.  My mouth started to water. Funny, that didn't happen when I looked at the real cupcakes.

Painting these cupcakes last night was a lesson in playful patience. Our class enjoyed experimenting with color, volume.  Some folks made frosting look like meringues, marshmallows, crescent moons.  Some elongated the cupcakes to look like rolls of corrugated cardboard.  Some floated sprinkles on cubism's flattened-plane shapes.  Mine was left incomplete, halting at the critical step of how to solve the ridged wrapper dilemma.  As Wayne Thiebaud said, "artists are problem solvers".  My problem is to figure out the color of the slim cast shadow of each ridge on a yellow-orange cake.  Blue? Purple?

As for Mr. Thiebaud, he has made a very long career of being a humbly successful artist.  He still lives in northern CA at the age of 90.  Meet him by watching the video below.

"If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack perspective."
     ~Wayne Thiebaud