Sweet Treats
The making of a food illustration
Happy New Year readers; I hope you are feeling well rested and well fed after a holiday feast or two. On that topic, this month’s dispatch is about food! Over the last couple months I’ve worked on a secret food-related commission that was intended as a surprise gift. Now that the cat is out of the bag post-Christmas, I can share the artwork with you all here. I was commissioned to create a piece to celebrate the ten year anniversary of a very special business: Bread by Us, an artisan bakery and espresso bar in Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood! This project was a true joy to work on. Here is the large final hand-painted piece:
Perhaps the best surprise and blessing of sharing my art over the last few years is that it’s given me the chance to reconnect in new ways with people from other parts of my life. This job came to me through my dear old friend Hardie (hi pal!) in Ottawa. We first met in Montreal when we were roommates at McGill at just 17, living away from home for the first time. Hardie’s partner Rachel is now one of three co-owners of Bread by Us. In honour of the bakery’s ten year anniversary this past December, Hardie reached out to me as he wanted to surprise the owners and staff with a custom piece of artwork, celebrating all the artistry and hard work that has been poured into Bread by Us. Such a sweet and thoughtful gift!
Over the last couple months, my friend and I have been collaborating to make the piece extra special. Hardie would send me photos of the bakery space and the staff members, while I scoured the bakery’s Instagram and various corners of YouTube. I looked for specialty food items I wanted to include, and watched videos of the BBU staff rolling out dough, shaping croissants, cutting pastries, loading gigantic ovens…I certainly have a new appreciation for the flurry of activity required to keep a bakery running! As with all of my projects, there were many phases: sketching, character studies for capturing the likeness of real people, testing out colours and types of paper, and creating the final work.
Coming up with a composition was the longest step; I knew I needed to show a number of different spaces and include a LOT of food and kitchen tools. The bakery is a long, narrow space and we wanted to show both the shopfront, as well as all the behind-the-scenes action in the back at the work tables and ovens. I can see the composition starting to take shape in one of these initial sketches (though I ended up changing the final paper orientation to vertical, to capture the narrow space better):
I love the details that ended up in the painting: Jess (one of the owners, at the front counter) holding a ciambelle, her favourite treat, baked using her grandmother’s special recipe. Shirin icing a decadent pink cake, in her stylish outfit to match. Rachel rolling out sheets of dough (with a rolling pin the size of her body, because the physicality of baking is no joke!), the barista Nick and his sleeve tattoos, Hardie and his dog Fingal waiting in line with the other customers. Braided challah bread and sourdough loaves dusted with flour. Shelves full of maple syrup, pickled beets and carrots, homemade tea blends, and bags of freshly roasted coffee beans.
This project showed me that food and kitchen environments can be a real artist’s playground - there are so many fun details and interesting shapes! So much of my work in the recent past was focused on the wilderness of northern BC. It was a great challenge to see how I could adapt to a project focused on people and food, two much less familiar subjects for me. I feel excited to continue bringing both these subjects into my work going forward.
More jobs about food in 2024 please! I can confirm I felt very hungry while working on this project. I mean, come on:
I haven’t yet been able to visit Bread by Us in person, but I can’t wait to get to Ottawa again and sample all the incredible breads, pastries and coffees they’re serving up! The bakery is a rad, feminist, community-centred space, with a real commitment to raising ethical standards within the food industry. You can learn more about Bread by Us here; any readers in the Ottawa region should pop by there for a croissant or a loaf and a coffee! You might even see my artwork on display there some day soon.
A little more about the process/inspiration for this piece:
Hardie’s initial vision for this project came from the Richard Scarry picture books we both grew up with in the early 90s, especially this kitchen spread from The Best Word Book Ever:
When I told my mum about working on this project, we started reminiscing about other food-related picture books from my childhood. She dug out a few classics for me from the collection she’d saved in our basement archives. I can’t describe the feeling of pure nostalgia and instant recognition that comes with looking at your old favourite picture books; even after not seeing them for 20+ years, every page is imprinted within a deep space in my brain. Dayal Kaur Khalsa’s How Pizza Came to Our Town was a much-beloved classic in my household:
I also took a good look through Mr. Belinsky’s Bagels, another childhood favourite, paying particular attention to the flattened, basic shapes and the detail in the busy crowd scenes:
Maira Kalman does wonderful painterly illustrations of food (using gouache paint too!) that never cease to inspire me:
In the process of making this commission, I was drawing and painting a LOT of incredible desserts and cakes. That inspired me to make my own birthday card design (listed in my online shop, if there’s a birthday sweetie pie in your life who needs a card!):
2023 Favourites Roundup
I’m in the process of writing my list of 100 things that made my year in 2023 (a practice I referred to in last month’s newsletter). Here are some favourite media off my list that I consumed in 2023, to keep you company in these coming winter months:
TV Shows:
The Bear
White Lotus
Somebody Somewhere
Bad Sisters
Beef
Reservation Dogs
Yellowjackets
Togetherness
Movies: It was a TV year for me, not a movie year, however, I did discover Aftersun, one of the very best movies I have ever seen.
Books: I started and ended 2023 with reading two exceptional books: The Outrun (Amy Liptrot) and Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver). In between, there was an assortment of fiction, memoir and graphic novels that I also loved:
Stay True (Hua Hsu)
Juliette (Camille Jourdy)
The Vaster Wilds (Lauren Groff)
Things I Don’t Want to Know (Deborah Levy)
Starting (and continuing to write) my newsletter was also among the top highlights of my last year! Thanks to all of you who read it. Despite all the parasocial weirdness of having an “Internet presence,” my newsletter feels closest to the real me. I’m looking forward to continued sharing here in 2024.
Best wishes this new year!
E
let’s all reconvene in Ottawa over bread together ❤️❤️ love this so much!
Awesome take on food and so great to see your creativity both in words or in art form!