Strawberry Lemonade Cake

Here’s the second illustration of my spring series! Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, some aspects of those sketches went on to become this. Most notably, the arrangement of lemon and chamomile was inspired by the panna cotta sketch on the left page, the Rilakkuma cookies of the strawberry dessert lead to me adding a little duck/chick cookie to the top of this cake, and the strawberry tulip dessert on the right page prompted me to add strawberries to the sides of the cake!

Here’s some process shots! As you can see, the strawberries were a last minute fix as I had started out with heart-shaped sponges along the edges of the cake. I really didn’t like how it was turning out though so I change direction with them at the end. I still really like the idea of having little heart-shaped additions as part of the desserts I draw, but it just didn’t work out this time, and I can always count on strawberries to fix a problem!

Spring Collection Sketches

I was having a bit of a tough time planning out my spring collection of dessert illustrations so I decided to do some quick sketch studies of desserts I liked the look of! Starting with a list of potential dessert ideas and flavours that have a spring vibe, I used these to begin searching for cute reference photos I could work from. Once I found a bunch of nice ones I started sketching them out while hoping I would get some ideas to work with for some full illustrations.

Aspects of these sketches went on to become my next illustration which I’ll share tomorrow!

Lemon & Viola Cake

Here is the first of a series of spring-themed dessert illustrations that I’m currently working on! I’m putting together this cute collection with the intention of ordering prints so I can finally re-open my shop for physical products again. I currently have some digital items available but it would be really nice to offer prints again, and I really like the idea of being able to sell stickers for the first time too!

I really enjoyed working on this illustration, it was the first time I tried drawing a lemon-flavoured one which was something I’ve been meaning to try for a long time. The lemons and viola that garnish the top of the cake were really fun to draw and I’m keen to include more like this in my upcoming work.

At one stage of the process I was having a hard time deciding whether I wanted the cake to be on a plate or not, I thought the plate added some nice context to the piece but also liked the simplicity of having the cake being the main focus without a plate. Luckily I’m in a really lovely discord server with some of my artist friends so I was able to get some more opinions to help me decide. We all decided that the plated version should be the one I move forward with which I think was definitely the right call!