#CakeLady | Beverly Shipko, Artist

Day 6 of 30 – Praline Cupcake

September 6, 2015 by Beverly

Jackson Pollock. That’s who I think about when I look at Crumbs Bake Shop Praline Cupcake.

I imagine someone going wild with the icing bag just like Pollock did with brushes and cans of house paint. The biggest difference is in the anger – there isn’t any this cupcake, whose purpose is to make us happy and come back for more.

Day 6. “Crumbs Praline Cupcake” by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled wood panel, 6 x 6 inches

The bottom line is that this cupcake design becomes an abstract composition. Similar to Poloack, Day 6 was about the handling of paint, but without the intensity. This work is all about the texture of the nuts and the building up of oil paint to literally simulate the nut crumbs 3-dimentionally on the surface of the panel. It’s all about the crumbs.

As opposed to the vibrant Day 5 Crumbs M&M Mini Cupcake, this delicacy has a limited palette. On Day 6, I decided to skip the plastic container that it came in (though I must admit I miss it a bit, and may try this again sometime with it) and added a little green to the background (a risky move for me since I’m not a green fan).

What is a praline cupcake, you might ask? According to Wikipedia, the broad definition is that it’s a confection including nuts and sugar, with cream being a common third ingredient. In France, bakers use almonds, while in the US we tend to use a combination of pecans, hazelnuts and almonds with milk or cream to achieve something akin to fudge. Whatever the recipe is, I remember it was delicious!

You won’t see this cupcake on the Crumbs website since it was a special cupcake that they made before filing bankruptcy. In the good old days, there was a wider variety of cupcakes on any given day and more rotating flavors. I wish I had taken more photos back then since Crumbs cupcakes look better than most, at least from an artist’s perspective. While competitors like Sprinkles offer great tasting cupcakes, how many can you paint with their signature circles on top?

This was a good break from yesterday, a relatively relaxing day (not as relaxing as going to the beach though).

Now it’s time to plan tomorrow’s treat. I feel a sugar craving coming on…

Day 4 of the 30/30 Challenge – Cake from The Boss

September 4, 2015 by Beverly

Over a year ago January, Bonnie and I went to Ridgewood, NJ for a used book fair, and had to stop by Carlo’s Bake Shop after watching the Grand Opening on Cake Boss.

And there it was – this pristine, luscious Oreo Cookie cake just crying out to be painted. And so I did today.

“Cake Boss Oreo Cookie Painting” by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled panel, 6 x 6 inches

This Cake Boss Oreo Cookie Cake looked much neater and artistic than similar cakes I had seen, which tended to be too crumbly looking to paint (not in a positive way).

One of the reasons it took so long to paint was that this cake needed a square format canvas (not a typical shape), which I didn’t have and rarely used until this year. I was trying to make a square subject work on a horizontal canvas, and it never did quite look right. The preliminary sketches were so unsatisfactory that I put this Oreo cake back on the shelf.

Now that I am using square 6 x 6 wood panels, I thought I would try again. I’m glad I did.

Here’s what the painting looked like when I first started. It was slow going, but I made steady progress all day. I had to be patient as I painted in the details, and was rewarded when the painting gradually came to life. I focused on the interplay of light and shadows, the contrast of black and white, and the addition subtle color tones to liven things up a bit. Not surprisingly, the most difficult part was the whipped cream.

Cake Boss Oreo Cookie Cake is deceptively complex. Like many paintings, the devil is in the details. Only during a Challenge, there comes a time when you have to stop. I already spent a day and a half painting this, and have to put my brushes down. When you’re a perfectionist as I am, some days this is incredibly difficult, and has resulted in overworked paintings. This won’t be one of them – a good thing.

While Bonnie and I never did meet any of the Valastro family in Ridgewood that day, Day 4 of the Challenge brought me back to to the time we did Buddy “Cake Boss” Valastro at the local Dobbs Ferry train station. We raced over after Bonnie read a Facebook post saying Buddy was filming a show featuring Lidia’s Bakeshop & Cafe for a new TLC series, where The Cake Boss came to the rescue of floundering bakeries and resuscited them.

I remember what Buddy said when I showed him postcards of my cake paintings. He was thrown for a minute since he thought I was a baker, not a painter, but then he looked me straight in the eye and said: “You and me, we’re both artists. We just do it differently.” What a complement! Maybe I should send an image of the Cake Boss Oreo Cookie Cake painting to him. (Note: After seeing Buddy’s puzzled look, I made new postcards that clearly say paintings under the images.)

Time to switch gears and start planning for tomorrow. Who knows what it will bring? As always, suggestions and photos are welcome.