We see beautiful and artfully created cakes in magazines and online all the time. Even if you are not into designing or creating desserts of any kind, you may be one of those people who loves flipping through photos of them.
Have you ever wondered how these masterpieces came to be? I’m not talking about the oven or the kitchen counter. I mean from the very beginning – the concept.
While some cake decorators prefer not to bother with sketching their cakes in any form, some (like me) prefer to have a visual to create from.
When I first began decorating cakes, I was strongly against (or maybe afraid of?) having to sketch out my cake designs beforehand. I insisted that the visual was only in my head.
It took one wedding cake that was too confusing for me to explain to the bride and groom and forced me to sketch out my first cake. In that sketch, I learned that a) maybe I was not, in fact, the worst sketch artist on the planet (as I had previously thought), and b) putting my mental images on to paper was not as difficult as I had expected, and actually somewhat relaxing.
Since that time, I have also learned that having a visual to “copy” allows me the most success! Turns out I am a really great copier! Ha! Sketching out my own designs and then copying them works wonderfully for me. I now sketch out pretty much all of my more-than-basic designs.
I use Adobe Sketch and my Apple Pencil for my images, although there are some earlier ones that were done with paper and pencil.
At this point, I find that drawing out my cake designs (or even ideas for possible cake designs) is a calming activity in itself.
And I always find it fun afterward to compare the two! Of course there are usually small details that change, but I am able to see just how closely I come to my original idea. It’s refreshing and it reminds me that the idea I created in my head really did have potential!
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