Day 8. Plate of Cookies

I was thinking about cookies after all that Rugelach talk yesterday.

This Plate of Cookies is from our favorite bakery right, The Riviera Bakehouse, right here in Ardsley, NY. It’s our go-to bakery for paintable and edible baked goods, and has been for over 30 years.

Liv Hansen, the owner of Riviera, who is an artist herself, brought over a box of cookies. She puts her talent to work in the bakery designing the most gorgeous cakes. Two years ago during my first Challenge, Liz came over to see some of my work and talk art, and gave me productive feedback that helped me save my Box of Donuts painting.

That afternoon, Liv and I arranged some of the cookies on my purple plate and took photos before they were devoured. It took me a while to get up the courage to paint this one. Now I have a lovely painting to commemorate that day.

This photo was taken that day too. Liv is holding the cake topper that she made for my surprise birthday party (I won’t tell you how long ago; we have a second fridge in the garage…). There are several levels in it: Liv created the chocolate cake topper she is holding, which is based on a painting I did, whose subject was a black-out cake from Riviera that Liv made!

So we have a photo of a cake made from a photo of my painting, which was made from photo of a cake. Got that?

I am surprised I was able to finish this painting given its complexity and time constraint. It actually took a day and a half of painting time, plus sketch time a few days before. This was one of those paintings that you knew was going to work after a few hours.

The trick to this painting was planning, and thinking through the approach to the layers of color. I started with the light sugar cookies and rainbow cookie, which was key since it’s much easier to paint dark over light when oil paint is wet. Then the purple plate came next, followed by the highlights and finishing touches.

While I love this painting, I need to be more careful in my selection of complex subjects. There needs to be a mix of simple and complicated, or I’ll never make it through the Challenge. I was way ahead of schedule but not so much now, which could become problematic towards the last half of January when I have some commitments.

This means that shorter blogs will be better. Pithiness is a skill I would like to hone anyway.

Now I’m going to spend some time strategizing for the next few days. Thank you for stopping by!