4th graders have been hard at work on their very detailed Tinted Cake Paintings, inspired by Bay Area Expressionist painter Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud is one of my personal favorite artists - I particularly love his landscapes and portraits. He is also particularly well known for his still life paintings of desserts. 4th graders looked at some of Thiebaud's cake paintings as a jumping off point for this project, and they have done such a phenomenal job infusing their own cakes with creative details and embellishments.
We learned how to draw realistic, 3-dimensional cakes step-by-step, starting with the cake tops, then the sides, bases and platters. Then, as an additional challenge, we learned how to draw layered cakes and sliced cakes. The drawing alone took about 2 and half or 3 one-hour art classes - I think all the hard work definitely shows! Next, we learned about tints. A tint is a color created by mixing one, two or more colors with white. For this project, students were not allowed to use traditional colors or black - they had to mix tints for every part of the painting. Aren't the cakes just delectable? :)
I so appreciate the work you do with the students and how you use a famous artist as a starting point!
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