Food Illustration: A Guide to Emotion & Storytelling Through Food Art

While it may seem counterintuitive, using images of food in art is a great way to amp up the symbolic connections and emotional power of your art. It's true that food is commonplace and often overlooked, but it's this ordinary-ness that makes it such an effective connection point to deeper emotions. We all eat. We all have memories and strong associations related to food.

This makes food a natural throughline to deep feelings, stories and meaning. In this class, we'll learn how to tap into that well of meaning, even with just a single-image illustration. We'll learn how to choose subjects and references that communicate the stories and feelings we want to explore, and we'll put all the pieces together in a condensed 30 min real-time demo.

What's Covered in the Class:

• What makes a food image feel a certain way
• How to tap into specific emotions and moods
• How to increase the sense of narrative in your food illustration, even when you're drawing a simple subject on a plain background
• How to take a good reference image
• How to make a food illustration look delicious
• PLUS a 30 min in-depth demo step-by-step active explanation along the way

Can you spot the emotion?

Each of these reference images touches on a different feeling. They may "feel" different to you than what I have them labeled, (feelings are subjective after all) but the three of them together are a great example of the way in which even single images of food without much other context can evoke very different emotions.

Who is this class is for?

Anyone who likes food and wants to use food imagery in their art more effectively

Do I need to have a realistic style?

No! Anyone with any style can take this class, but if you do want to work in a realistic style, you should have some foundation with basic proportions and be able to create your own sketch as we will not go over basic proportions in the demo.

What materials are needed?

You can work in any media you like, but if you want to work along with me using the same media, I'll be working in watercolor, colored pencil and paint pen.