The settign sun

 

I was a huge fan of Thomas Kinkade growing up, until very recently. I had always thought that he was some kind of pioneer in painting the light and was from the 18th century the latest!

But then I googled him....

As it turns out, he was mainly famous for mass reproductions of his work that people could buy at an affordable cost, and hence the most possessed by common people. And just like it does most of the times after over-inspection, his work lost its charm on me. I started noticing a cartoonish, fantastical feel in his work, and not necessarily in a good way.

 Luckily for me, a few months ago I stumbled upon Helen White's work. She is a UK based artist, who does this beautiful photo-realistic work with light. And she also shares my other love, windows! At this point I almost want to thank Helen for doing her art and keeping the 'torch' lit for me.

This painting is based on a picture taken from my living room window which overlooks the Indian lake. The sun was setting, bathing the sky and the back forest in beautiful colors.

According to my current teacher at the Worcester Art Museum, the sky still looks like an under-painting. 

Day 1 at the class

Day 2. I tried to remove some of the yellowness from the clouds that are higher.

I added some more light greens in the bushes and slightly corrected the direction of the reflection on water.

Here, I added made the reflection more orange than yellow and added more file lines of orange across the rest of the water. The lines might not be very apparent as it was a thinned out paint, but I am hoping it gets the feel of very small waves. I need to add more greens to the bottom layer of trees such that it almost forms a halo.

The paint photographs differently in day time as compared to at night time as in previous two pictures.

I added the basic color to the houses lines for sidings and shingles, and the second tree on right.

I added a stronger perspective to the shingles on the left house than needed. In fact, if I add any significant increase in the shingle sizes going from top to bottom, I am going to end up in trouble with respect to the right side portion of the roof of the same house as that does not increase in size top to bottom. As I am typing this now, I can also see the problem with clouds that Ella pointed out.

After waiting a  few days, I changed the colors of the roof and the left house, added some details to the left window. I should add the siding lines to it, but I don't want to draw them as I did in the right house. I do not necessarily like that effect.

Cat in the hat cake

I tried my first attempt at fancy frosting today.

 

Many many years ago, back in India, I used to love baking. 

But frosting, that I never even tried.I remember my mother toiling over a bowl of butter and sugar for hours at a time before each of our birthdays, whipping those together literally by hand! That is how she was taught in her baking class. It looked painful and I didn't care much for the frosting anyway! 

And back then, there was no internet to teach you things. 

And the fancy frosting tips and bags were the things of either rich people or professional bakers.. 

But recently I came across this tutorial through Pinterest, and I wanted to give it a try. And the chance came with my friend's daughter's first birthday when her usual cake maker was busy with the new baby. She asked me to make an individual cake for her daughter. (Thank God for one of the supermarket bakeries which offered to make the big cake with rice paper printed frosting.. it would have been a nightmare to do this on a big scale the first time.)

First attempt using Betty Crocker Whipped butter cream frosting..

The good thing was that, even though I could not find black color for the border, I was able to mix the three standard colors to get a darkish gray color! 'Yey' for painting basics!

Second attempt with the same.

But this time it came out nice and looked fabulous while still on freezer paper! But the problem with the store bought frosting is that, it does not freeze solid. And this is what happened when I tried to peal it from the paper!

Finally, during my third attempt, I decided to not be lazy and make my own frosting, simply by mixing butter, sugar and vanilla extract. And I was amazed as to how easy it was!

  
I still had the leftover storebought frosting, and it worked out perfectly to frost the rest of the cake as it did not have the slight yellow tint my homemade frosting had and took on the blue color beautifully!

Finally, I added the peaks of blue and white using the $3 frosting tips I bought from Christmas tree shop, and voilla! Love it! Can't wait to try it again!