Hello and welcome to the second season of ‘Food Photography & Styling’ (FP&S). As the first season was much about basis of ‘FP&S’, I thought of taking you all little deep into the subject by bringing in 12 talented food blogger to write on 12 different topics. To start the event we have awesome food stylist and photographer Madhuri Aggarwal of ‘MADaboutkitchen‘. Food photography and styling is all about igniting your senses without touching and feeling the food in real. If the food is making you drool by just seeing it virtually….then it is the hard and mind work of the stylist behind the scene. The key element of food styling is a good background. In today’s post Madhuri will share with us how to choose, paint, dry, store and reuse the backgrounds which will be used in creating the mood of Food Photography and Styling…
Thank you Lubna for inviting me and trusting me to write on your space. I would like to congratulate you on the efforts in collating everything that is to know about Food Styling.
Food Styling is a combination a lot of things put together. It not only is about food but also about colour, composition, texture coming together in balance. There are a lot of things that are important while styling. Backgrounds is one of the important aspects of styling. Background colour is the base that builds the frame. Hence today i will walk you through how we can paint our own background that will complement the food that i want to shoot.
I today want to shoot my new Bright Green Vintage Bottles and some Matcha Green Tea Macarons. There are a lot of colours that will go with these, but i want to take a Tone on Tone image and hence i will go with Cream and Lime Green.
I will demonstrate a basic technique which is quick, simple and easy. Yet you can play around with colours to make some interesting backgrounds.
THINGS WE WILL NEED
- A ply wood board
- Acrylic Colours – Any colour of your choice. But today i am using Cream and Lime Green
- Sponge
- Some old newspaper
- Hand Gloves
METHOD:
- To begin clean the ply wood board with a dry cloth.
- Spread the newspaper on the floor and place the plywood on the paper.
- Squeeze the paint on the plywood according to your liking. I have used more of cream as i want the background more cream than green. Hence i have squeezed more of cream compared to the green.
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Now wear the gloves and using the sponge start dabbing as well as mixing the paint.
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Dabbing using sponge not only makes the merging of colours easy and smooth but also gives a good texture.
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Do this all over the board.
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Add more paint wherever required.
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Let it dry completely.
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If you feel like adding an other colour or another layer you can do it at this stage.
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Let it air dry completely before stacking it with others or using it.
REUSE:
- As we have used acrylic colour, it can be be stored and reused.
- Or paint over it again with another colour.
STORING:
- Make sure to dry the boards completely before stacking them up.
- Store them in dry place away from moisture. Stack them like books and not one on top of the other.
- Place small wooden blocks between each boards so they don’t press against each other and stick to each other.
Thank you Madhuri for coming up with this wonderful guest post. Want to learn more from Madhuri then do drop by at her workshop at Bangalore.
You can find Madhuri @ Facebook : Pinterest : Instagram : Twitter.
usha says
Lubna, thanks for restarting this series. Will follow the series and looking forward to the rest.
Rafeeda - The Big Sweet Tooth says
The idea of doing it with a sponge is interesting! Will paint my boards this way… thank you for the tip, Madhuri… I absolutely love her photography…
Richa Gupta says
What a fantastic tutorial! Love it!
preethiscuisine says
Such an informative post Madhuri. Thank you Lubna for sharing this with us.Will try this technique for painting my boards.
Sundari Giri says
Good idea to dab and paint with sponge, will try this technique, loved it Madhuri
Aisha says
I take note to try it!
sunil says
Good idea mam
Raj singh says
Wow, awesome tutorial madhuri,
The idea of sponge is Intresting.
Btw which theme you are using ?
It’s look very pretty.