Day 28. Blueberry Cheesecake

Another blueberry dessert for my Maine show, this time from Magnolia Bakery in NYC.

If this image looks vaguely familiar, it’s because I painted Magnolia’s Cranberry Cheesecake on Day 9. I picked the cranberry version first because of the vibrant color.

Since I was finishing yesterday’s Blueberry Pie in the morning, I didn’t start this until the afternoon. I kept both paintings on the same easel. At one point, I was working on both of them at the same time. The colors are similar, and I kept the same paper palette.

Blueberry Cheesecake is actually a composite view from several photos, which you can see better here.

There’s a light underpainting of yellow ochre to give this work some warmth. I started with the background in oil, which is white in the foreground with a tint of yellow, rose and light blue in it. The goal was just to keep this from looking too stark.

Then I moved on to the berries to work out the interplay of  blueberries and dripping juice. I spent a time studying the colors. Some blueberries looked like cranberries. When blueberries pooled on the table, they were dark indigo blue. But when they drip, the”sauce” is in the wine family.

Highlights are important in this painting, as they are to most paintings. Note that I left the highlighted areas white so I can see how they will look, and paint them in on a partially dry surface. Wet w hite highlights over indigo don’t work well, at least for me. The white almost seems to slither right off, barely leaving any paint.

I stopped painting at 1am. In the photos, these blueberries look too bright. Unfortunately I mixed white with the indigo. I was darkening them, but apparently not enough.

So I returned to the easel this morning hoping the blueberries didn’t look so day glow. Didn’t happen. I started this morning by darkening all the light blue areas (which are still photographing too light). Then I took the highlights down, which were too prominent. Since this took almost 3 hours,  I’ll have to plan my day carefully today!

Thanks for stopping by. Wish me good luck today!