Wayne Thiebaud - Let them eat cake!...well draw cake anyway

We are beginning our new project this week. We will be talking more about shape and line. We are practicing "seeing".

We will be drawing a cake with a slice cut out of it.

Wayne Thiebaud

Cakes

1963

Oil on canvas

60 x 72 in

National Gallery of Art, Washington

Wayne Thiebaud - pronounced the word "Tea" (like in a cup of tea) and the word "bow" (Like in a bow and an arrow). Tea-bow. Wayne Thiebaud (born November 15, 1920) is an American painter best known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects—pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs—as well as for his landscapes and figures. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his early works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.

Questions we will discuss:

What shape is a cake?

Is the image of the painted cake a circle?

Is a circle perfectly round?

The cake top is and oval. Why isn't the shape perfectly round?
Are all the curves of the cake the same or are they different?

Why?

Is this a still life, portrait, or landscape?