Year 5 students were inspired by the Dutch realistic still life paintings of the 17th Century. They appreciated the artists’ ability to ‘fool the eye’ into believing that they were seeing the real thing in the painting.

The oil paintings they researched were masterful looking like photographs, as texture and colour was represented realistically, with great detail so we ‘believe’ what we are seeing to be true.
Inspired by the artists’ ability to create something that looked real they sought to create their own versions of something more beloved to them than: not lemons or seafood, but cake! They first chose a favourite type of cake, some chose from rainbow, chocolate, cheesecake and many other delicious options and drew their 2-Dimensional version of the cake designs in their Visual Diaries, inspired by their research. Their goal was to achieve a very realistic appearance of their chosen cake in their drawings to make their ‘slice of cake’ look as real as possible. Texture was considered and they thought about how to represent that texture in their clay model with holes or hatch marks. The Year 5 artists then created their chosen cake in 3 dimensions using clay and the slab method. Once the clay had dried it had been fired in the kiln, the Artists then painted their cake sculpture with acrylic paints and in some cases added plasticine sculpted ‘chocolates’ and other delights to enhance the realism of their piece. They look good enough to eat!

Year 5
Haileybury, Berwick