Tai Yang Bing

Because my brother-in-law is a relative of the Lin Family, I get to have the original, delicious Tai Yang Bing (太陽餅) or "Suncake" whenever he and my sister go to Taiwan. I wanted to show them my appreciation, and my brother-in-law suggested that I paint something for them.

I originally planned to draw something intricate with details that will blow my mind and break my fingertips, but when I showed my sister and brother-in-law the concept sketches, my sister was rather forward about me doing this instead of the other. –_-;;; It wasn’t even a real concept or anything, I was just bored waiting for them to decide.

I’ve never actually been to Taichung, so I’ve never tried these pastries fresh, but I do adore Tai Yang Bing~ I will need to pay them a visit one day and thank them in person. :3a

In any case, I took pictures while I was working on this watercolor painting (on canvas, which was a stupid thing to do), so here are the work in progress shots:

The initial sketch, which is pretty tiny... probably 1-2 inches long? The "?" is where I originally planned to draw this design/motif they have on their plastic bags, but there was hardly enough time to finish the character so I had to scrap that idea. ;_;

The beginning of the painting process! I used a flesh colored pencil to sketch the character on canvas and added the flesh tones with watercolor. Ugh! I should have opted to use acrylics right here, but I'm not that comfortable with acrylics! :(

Yes, my drawing table is purple. :D

The Tai Yang Bing was probably the most difficult to do, because I had never painted pastries before! The flaky texture was a challenge to render! But I guess I passed, since the owners of the shop immediately knew he was eating a Tai Yang Bing?

Then again, I cheated and wrote the "太陽餅" on the pastry. They actually have that stamped on the real pastry as well, but my sister made the mistake of telling me it's "餅" when it's not. ;_;

The first of five sunflowers were… wrong. Haha! They look more like daisies than sunflowers actually! I was getting pretty frustrated with my choice of canvas and medium at this point. xD;;; And oh! The little booties are there now too! :3

Almost finished! Just needed to take a coffee break because my eyes were failing. The blue shadow needed a lot of blending too and this is where I begun correcting the size of the center of the sunflowers.

All done! Aside from the stamp and signature. I made another idiotic mistake of using my Chinese name stamp to sign this because it’s canvas! Dx The stamp hardly showed up at all so I had to write my Chinese name and it looked quite hideous, honestly. ;_;

…I feel like I have to redeem myself and draw them a new piece, ahaha. ;_; I’ll save it for the next time I visit Taiwan!