How To Draw Some Cute Cakes For A Picnic! (Patreon)

Since this month’s illustration club prompt is ‘a sunny afternoon’ I thought I’d make a step-by-step article on how to draw a couple of cakes for a picnic.

I’m trialling doing the pdf step-by-step guides as posts here on Patreon instead of being downloads like they were before - let me know if you have any thoughts about the new system! Doing it this way means I can make multiple smaller guides for specific things rather than needing to put everything in one big downloadable pdf.

How To Draw A Slice Of Cake

Start by drawing a horizontal rectangle slightly slanted so that the right hand side is a little lower than the left.

From the top corners of that rectangle, draw two diagonal lines that meet about a quarter of the way across to form a very pointy triangle.

Now let’s add some frosting! Create two squiggly lines across the middle of the rectangle, and then one horizontal line just a little bit down from the top.

Add two dollops of icing on top, I keep the one on the left open so we can add a strawberry to it.

This is where I like to add details, like some curved lines on our dollops to make them look swirled, some dots and circles to give our cake some texture, and I also add a strawberry.

And that’s it!

How To Draw A Cute Cupcake

As a guide, draw a trapezoid (haven't used that word since school!) that’s narrower at the bottom than the top.

From the top left, follow that guide around the bottom and to the top right, but curve out the line at the bottom so it isn’t straight.

Add a big, blobby shape on top that extends wider than the base.

Now let’s give it a cherry and some icing, so add a circle right on top and then a wobbly line across the middle.

Draw a few vertical lines down the base of the cupcake for some more detail.

And it’s done - looks delicious!

To colour in either of these tasty cakes, the process is the same:

Start by colouring in each area in a flat colour, and this is where you can really sell what kind of cakes they are - are they deep brown chocolate cakes, or a classic sponge like mine?

Start to add some broad, gentle shading, for this slice I'm shading around the bottom of the icing dollops, and maybe give some texture to the sponge cake (I focus my texture around the edges).

Now apply some finer, darker shading, and any fine details - here I added shading to the icing, on the strawberry, and I’ve added a line of jam in the middle as well!

Removing Outlines

If you’d like to draw your cakes without any outlines, you can use the outlines as a guide instead of colouring in between the lines.

If you’re drawing digitally, take the outline we made and reduce the opacity of that layer to about 20% and use that as a guide for drawing the coloured shapes on layers underneath. I like to put different coloured elements on different layers so that they’re easy to adjust.

You’ll need to make sure the shading is strong enough to separate shapes/colours, because without the outlines if the colours are too similar they’ll get a bit lost! When you’re finished you can hide the outline layer completely.

And now we have some delicious cakes!

You could play around with making these cakes different flavours by changing the colours of the cake, the colour of the icing, and the toppings too. You could add blue spots for blueberry muffins, or brown chunks for chocolate chip. Or maybe you want to create a really decadent mud cake! 😋Hope you enjoyed this guide, I think I'll make one on how to draw gingham patterns next (very useful for picnic blankets) but let me know what you'd like to see!

❤