The Art of Cake Decorating is not about spending hours in a broiling hot kitchen baking only from scratch, although you can certainly do so, but rather it’s about the art form the finished cake takes and exactly how you can achieve that polished and professional look!

EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW A CAKE PAN FROM A BEDPAN YOU CAN CREATE AMAZING CAKES WITHOUT SPENDING A FORTUNE ON CULINARY SCHOOL

THE BASICS…

Learn the 3 most popular forms of cake decorating (page 9)

Discover the 6 components all cakes have in common, regardless of the ingredients that you use! (page 12)
Get the 7 foolproof tips for baking a GREAT cake! These tips will blow you away and you probably never even thought of them. (page 13)

Discover 4 ingenious ways to substitute alternative ingredients to make your cakes fit a variety of diets! (page 14)

Find out the 3 SECRET tips professional cake decorators use to get their cakes ready for decorating! (page 15)
YOU CAN EVEN USE A MIX!

The Art of Cake Decorating

is your one-stop shop for everything cakes! We’ve covered everything you need to know about supplies, patterns, icing; we’ve even put together a whole section on training for the aspiring professional cake decorator!

I truly believe that an artist could spend a lifetime exploring color and the results of color mixing, there are just so many possibilities and results. Color mixing is something beginners often shy away from. Don’t, rather learn the few fundamentals, embrace the challenge and get mixing. At worst you’ll produce mud colors; if you don’t want to waste the paint by throwing it away, use it with some white to do a tonal exercise, or underpainting. Here are some tips to help you with color mixing that I wish I’d known far earlier than I did.

• Use mixtures rather than colors straight from the tube for more interesting color. For example, mix blue and yellow to make green or add other colors to tube green to modify the color.

• Most color-mixing problems come from overmixing. Mix very lightly on the palette or directly on the support to prevent this, and once the color is down, leave it alone.
• Some books tell you to use no more than three colors in a mixture, but the problem isn’t usually concerned with the number of colors; it’s a matter of which colors you use. Paint characteristics and your choices of colors determine how they will mix. Refer to the article on Split-Primary Color Mixing to learn how to mix clean, bright color every time.
• Complements (opposites on the color wheel) create color vibrations and enhance each other when placed side by side. When mixed, they neutralize each other.
• To lower the intensity of a color, mix it with its complement or Burnt Sienna rather than black, gray or sepia. These colors tend to deaden mixtures.
• For high-intensity mixtures avoid the third primary. The third primary is the complement of the mixture of any two other primaries and will lower the intensity of this mixture. For example, you know that red and blue make violet; however, a warm red (which has yellow in it) makes a dull, low-intensity violet when mixed with blue, because yellow is the complement of violet.

History

Photography is an expansive art form that includes more than just portraiture, landscape or glamor photography. Both professional and amateur photographers may favor specific types of photography over others. While a professional photographer may work in photojournalism, an amateur may be particularly interested in macro-photography. Read on to learn more about the various types of photography.

Equipment

1) Use a 35mm single lens reflex (SLR) camera or a digital 4-megapixel or higher camera, manual or automatic with manual override and 50-55mm lens or zoom lens. Read your instructions!

2) Use a sturdy tripod with tilt and rotation and a cable release or self-timer to reduce risk of camera shake.

3) Shoot indoors with two 500-watt photo flood lamps (3200K) mounted in reflectors.

4) For slides, I use 3200K tungsten Ektachrome Professional films, ISO 100, which can be processed in 3 hours. If I need to re-shoot, I can often do it the same day. For prints indoors with lights, I use an 80A conversion filter and ISO 200-400 film. For digital I set the white balance for tungsten lighting.

Procedures:

1)Fasten art to a flat, black background with double-stick tape, tacks or use a black mat. Place on the wall or on an easel. The art must be parallel to the camera lens, the center of the lens pointing at the center of the art. Use a bubble level to be sure camera and art are level. Tape a gray/color scale next to the art if your slides are for reproduction.

2)Lamps should be 4-5 feet away from the art, behind the camera at 45 degree angle on each side and at the same height as the camera. Check to be sure there are no hot spots, shadows or shine reflecting off the art. (An artist on the Internet says he places plastic wrap over the painting so he can check for hot spots. He removes it before shooting his slides.) The room should be completely dark when you shoot. Cover the windows and turn out the lights. For textured work like collage try raking the light, using just one light from the side and adjusting the exposure accordingly.

3) Fill the viewfinder or LCD (digital) with the IMAGE ONLY, centered and absolutely square to the sides, top and bottom. Move the camera or zoom lens, not the art.

4) Focus carefully in the center of the art.

5) Take a meter reading using an 18% gray card or a large piece of 18% gray mat board. Set the f-stop at f8-f16 and adjust the speed according to the instructions with your camera to get the best exposure. When you shoot a picture, take three exposures (bracket exposures), one at the setting, one a half-stop above and one a half-stop below. Take three shots at each exposure and you should have 3-6 good slides to choose from. Record the settings for each slide as you take them, so you can tell which ones work best. In my experience with my equipment, watercolors or light-value artwork need to be slightly overexposed for better color saturation.

6) The best combination for me is a slow speed setting (1/8, 1/15, 1/30 sec.) with a high f/stop (f11 or f16) for color saturation and sharp image. Since my digital camera has only an f8 stop, I can’t photograph at such a low speed.

7) Check camera batteries and make sure ISO setting matches film. If your digital has ISO settings, use a lower setting for less &noise&. Load your film or your media card.

packshot photography The PackShot People deliver inspired brand & advertising photography services to clients in the UK. Offering a fast and cost-effective solution to your pack shot advertising photography needs. UK photographers.

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