When I moved out into my new apartment, like many would, I was excited to decorate! I was particularly excited to do some minimalist paintings for the dining area, where there was the most free wall real estate. I'm not an experienced painter, and so I thought these would be simple, quick, and more affordable ways to decorate. I however, learned much and improved along the way, and want to share with you some quick helping points on painting minimalist food art.

Supplies

Canvases I used were two 22x28 inch artist loft level 1 canvases and one 24x30 inch level 2 canvas from Michaels. These can be pretty darn cheap when found on sale.

Acrylic paints I used:

Level 1 Liquitex colored paints
Golden Acrylic Titanium White
Artist Studio (From Joanns) Transparent White (or Zinc white)

General colors used for each painting

Sushi painting:
primary yellow, cadmium red medium hue, yellow ochre (maybe?), titanium white
Egg Painting:
Background: primary blue, hookers green hue, titanium white
Egg yolk: primary yellow, cadmium red medium hue
White colors: titanium white plus a smidge of blue and green
Pan: Ivory black and titanium white depending on darkness desired
Donut Painting:
Pink: quinacridone magenta and transparent white for the pink (Alizaren crimson works too but will look different),
Dough: burnt Sienna, primary yellow, and transparent white
Sprinkles: assortment of the paints I used t

Brushes:

Wide brush set from Michaels
Cheap brush set from Michaels
Thin brush set from Joanns (I think)

Additional useful things:

Tablet: I used it to show my reference images
Ruler
Tape

Step 1: Find Inspiration!

I did not come up with any of these designs myself, I just found them online. The sushi, coffee, and egg ones I found through google. The donut one I found on reddit. I like to save screenshots I like that I'd like to maybe try painting in the future. I'm not at that level of creative to come up with these great compositions myself, and so I'll link to give credit to where I found these below.

Sushi, Coffee, Eggs, Donut

Step 2: Level One: Sushi and Coffee

These ones are very simple with no shadows, minimal detail work. The key lessens with this is getting a nice smooth colors with no smudges, and nice straight and smooth defined lines.

Lesson 1: Backgrounds and Smooth Color Coatings

If you look at the sushi painting, the coating is super smooth, whereas in the egg painting background isn't as smooth and you see more splotches of brushwork and noticeable discolorations.

I found the key to getting smooth color and background with acrylic paint was simple: mix a lot of paint and just use that without trying to re-mix and replicate the same color. It's just a bit too difficult to mix exactly the same color to where any difference isn't noticeable. The coloration of the paint darkens and saturates as the paint dries so depending on the state of the paint, you may not be re-mixing the paint properly to match the existing color. On top of that, the brushwork will be noticeable anyway.

I first test my colors with a small amount of paint to find a color I like. Once I get that right, I then mix a lot of paint that I know will cover the whole canvas enough to where there are no bits of blank canvas showing through (I'm a bit ocd for that). I then use a wide brush to liberally apply the paint, first in "x" shapes then side to side and up and down, dipping the brush in water if I notice the flow is lacking from my brush. If I didn't mix enough paint, I would just mix a whole new batch and repaint the whole thing.

Lesson 2: Use tape for straight lines

Minimalist paintings are very clean with smooth edges which can be hard to mimic by hand if you're like me and lack great skill. In the sushi painting, I sketched a trace and used a ruler to help guide my sketch lines for the chopsticks. However, I also hand painted the lines, and while the results are fine, they could be better. In the coffee painting, you can see that the dividing line is much cleaner and perfectly straight because I used tape. Use masking tape, or in my case, packaging tape that I dulled on my pants, and you won't regret it!

Step 3: Level 2: Eggs

The egg painting was actually the first one I did and where I learned about difficulties of smooth background colors. This painting also starts adding a couple extra complexities. The first is simply more colors and shades with some shadowing, and the second is the addition of more shapes. This highlights the importance of the third lesson: the underdrawing.

Lesson 3: Underdrawing

One reason why I made mistakes with the background color is because I sketched the bulk of the pattern on the blank canvas. I sketched the pan shape, and planed to paint the background color around it. While this is often fine, since I wanted a really full and smooth background color with non-noticeable brush strokes, I didn't liberally coat the canvas as evenly in all areas as I should've. I ended up with areas around the pan not fully covered. Even though it wasn't super obvious, it was still noticeable. The lesson: sketch after the background has been painted and on top of it. Don't be afraid to mess up, if you use sketch lightly you can always erase anyway.

The next element of the underdrawing is to get the proper proportions. I REALLY struggled to get the hang of this. I tried using the pencil as a measuring guide, but I just wasn't getting it right. So instead, I just brute forced the math and measured lengths on my iPad to get proportions: for example, the diameter of the pan relative to the the width of the canvas. I also needed to use a right angle triangle ruler to help rough sketch the forks and the salt shaker because I was getting skewed forks and bad corners.

Step 4: Level 3: Frosted Donut

Lesson 4: Contrast

This isn't really about creating contrast in your compositions since I just referenced my composition. Rather, this is just what I found helpful is creating the contrast in my version.

First, really emphasizing the lighter side vs the darker side of the frosting. I had to go over the frosting 2-3 times to get it to where I wanted it. My first time through, the light side wasn't light enough. As I blended in the lighter shade, I ended up over doing the light shade all around as evidenced by the second pic. After another effort I was able to get it roughly right, but kept tinkering with it to get the proper emphasis.

Another minor detail is in the sprinkles. If you notice closely there are two coats of paint on the sprinkles. I saw this in the reference and found that this had a subtle but great impact. I basically applied a coat of plain color and then just mixed a little bit of white into it and applied the second coat.

Lesson 5: Texture

A key focal point of the composition is the bite, and the contrast and texture within it. I found it nice that acrylic dries relatively quickly for this. I mixed an assortment of different shades of brown and white and just applied layers of paint as they dried, not really adding water to my brush. I tried to get some impasto and actual 3d texture to show from the paint. I more dabbed the paint rather than brushed it on to get fairly minimal blending.

Lesson 6: Remember Your Painting is Unique!

As you can tell, my paintings didn't come out exactly like their references. And I'm more than happy with that. I was frustrated at first that my salmon didn't look just like the reference image. I was holding up actual salmon with my blended paint to see if my blended color was salmon and why mine didn't look like the photo. In reality the color of my salmon differed depending on the lighting, so I wasn't ever really going to get it just like it.

My donut also didn't look just like the reference. It wasn't as bright hot pink, and the my dough is darker, but I think it looks good and I like how it came out. When I was complaining to an actual painter about why I couldn't get mine to look just like the reference, I'll never forget when she just simply said, focus on painting what you think looks good, not exactly what you think you see.