How to paint a Spring cake

I often get asked how I paint my cakes.  So I thought, for this post, rather than just a picture of a finished cake I would show you a little of the process. That makes it sound rather grand when actually all it involves is me sitting and painting. (But incase you are curious I've included the finished cakes too.)

 I recently had two separate orders for Spring cakes.  You can see the original here.

I used The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady as my reference, you can see it just next to the cake.  I paint freehand. For this flower I just placed a light colour where I thought the flowers should be.  With plants it is easy to make a stem a bit longer or to add a leaf if it doesn't look quite right.

I use paste colours and sometimes powder colours, and I use boiled water, although you can use vodka.

I sometimes paint a rough out line of the object, this is helpful for birds as you want them to look correct.

I paint the lighter colours first adding three or four darker tones on top.  When you paint on fondant as opposed to paper it is harder to make tones by adding washes, you need to add darker colours to get the same effect.  You can see here that I wash away any guide lines that are excessive.

I hope in the future to write some blog posts with tutorials for you to try at home, but I would love to see pictures of any painted cakes you have already done.  Leave a link in the comments below.

xxx