Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Let Them Eat Cake

The most unique and unexpected Christmas present I got this year came from my dad.  It was an oil painting kit that came with everything you need to get started.  Paints, brushes, canvas, and a how-to book.   I felt a mixture of excitement, inspiration, and terror thinking about what in the world I was going to do with it.

The walls in my parents house feature a few of my dad's masterpieces from over the years.  After a long hiatus he started painting again, and I got dibs on one of the first ones he did when he started back up.  It's hanging in my kitchen, isn't it nice?  I left Christmas with some pointers from my dad, but was still terrified at tackling a landscape.

While reading Jordan Ferney's blog I saw an old post about a collection of cakes her husband Paul Ferney painted.  How freakin amazing is this?  And each painting has a cute little phrase like "After a slice of that chocolate cake she was in the mood to crash a party." and "As she sat there with her sisters, giggling and devouring an entire cake, she felt like she was 12 years old again." I love them all!



So while legitimately snowed in today, with my DVR bordering on empty and Netflix devoured, I pondered what to do with myself.  DING DING DING!  Today is painting day.

Not completely sure what I was doing, I pulled out all of my brushes and paints and planned my attack.  I took a look at a bunch of Paul Ferney's paintings and settled on which cake/cake stand/background combo I thought was do-able and I set up shop.  Do notice the laptop playing a marathon of Friday Night Lights on Netflix.

Now the smart thing to do would be to sketch out my attack plan with pencil, but I couldn't find one anywhere, so I drew ever so lightly with pen, which gave me enough of an idea of where to put paint to canvas.

I started with the cake stand, which I was hoping to be a nice jade green.  It came out a little darker than I was hoping, but I quickly realized that the more you try and fix a color the more paint you wind up with.  It was getting out of hand!

Next I moved onto the most fun part, the cake!  I outlined the cake and filled it in solid brown, then went back and really caked it on (no pun intended).  I wanted it to look like thick, gooey frosting.  I added a candle, painted in the background, and voila!  She was done.  And for the record, it may have been easier to paint the background before the rest of it instead of trying to paint around everything!


This is by no means a Paul Ferney, but I'm glad I took the plunge and gave it a try.  Here it is.  Not quite good enough to eat, but I tried.  I think I might attempt a painting class to actually learn what I'm doing, but this was a much better way to spend an afternoon than shoveling snow.  Although eating cake may have been better...