How to paint a simple Cupcake

Calling all painters!!!

Come join 2011’s 1st Passion for Paint party this weekend.

Links open at 6 pm PST Friday night!

Ok. For this weekend’s painting tutorial. A pink & chocolate cupcake.

Why did I paint a cupcake?

1. I needed something to go with my coffee painting tutorial – and that means something sweet.
2. I needed something besides hearts to paint for Valentine’s Day.
3. I’m paint better than I bake.
4. I wanted to give you something sweet!

There’s actually another reason that I had forgotten all about. When I was a little girl, a friend and I used to draw food by the our with colored pencils. Food!

I have no idea why we drew food, but we’d do hamburgers and milkshakes and sundaes. Day after day, we’d draw together.

I’ve long since lost touch with Marybeth, but sketching this cupcake made me rewind back to when I was 8 years old.

We didn’t paint. We used colored pencils. That’s funny too because I’ve been wanting to get a nice set of pencils to play around with.

This is so simple, I feel a little funny calling it a ‘tutorial’. You only need 4 colors – a couple of pinks, dark brown and white.

 

You can take the pattern from here or I’ll post it later today here. It takes me longer to write the tutorial then the blog post, which is why I’m always behind with my tutorials.

And it’s more fun to ‘talk’ to you guys then it is to write instructions.

 

Okay. Please forgive the weird coloration on this. I tried a new camera setting. I take pictures about as good as I bake. And throw Photoshop into that same category.

Step 1. After you paint the background and transfer the pattern, paint the insets of the cupcake liner with light pink.

I realize it looks like dark pink – but it’s not. It’s light pink. Really!

This part might actually drive you nuts if you don’t have a steady hand. Try it though. Use a liner brush and see how you do. If it doesn’t look right, just paint the whole liner (is that what it’s called?) with dark brown. It’ll still be cute.

See! This exposure is a lot better. (Same camera setting – go figure!)

Step 2. With the darker pink, paint heart and shade icing layers. You can also shade a little bit on the liner if you want.

 

Step 3. Paint the icing and liner insets with light pink, covering the shading.

 

Step 4. Paint the rest of the liner with dark brown.

Step 5. Highlight the icing and heart with white.

Step 6. Topcoat the icing with light pink.

Have I ever told you that you don’t have to paint over your shading and highlighting?

You don’t have to paint over your shading and highlighting.

If you like the way it looks, leave it. The only reason why I add a topcoat is to camouflage any paint blotches. The more you paint, the better you’ll get at shading and highlighting and you won’t want to cover it up.

But, just in case you paint about as often as I bake, layering the paint will always give you a good result.

Okay! That’s it! Six steps, four paint colors. You can get the full painting instructions here.

Sweet!