5 Tips for Drawing Food with AD Markers

1. Supplies: Choose the best materials within your means. A good quality paper often has a more significant effect on the finished piece of art than one of the more costly markers. For instance, AD Marker paper works really well with a wide range of marker types from our classic xylene to alcohol markers, watercolor markers, drawing ink markers, and more.

2. Color: Look at the food you are drawing and note which colors make the food the most appetizing? Does the decadent filling offset the delicate colors of a macaron cookie? For many foods, you'll find that a palette with similar colors in a range from dark to light will work well with your subject.

3. Shine and Shadow: From glossy candy to rich chocolate, your food comes to life when you pay attention to the spaces of color (or absence thereof) that emphasize shininess and its counterpart, shadow. Shine isn't always white; sometimes, it's just a lighter tint of your subject's main tones. At the same time, shadows aren't always black or gray - they can be purple where the main subject is pink, for instance. The color of the subject may also be reflected in the shadow beneath the food.

4. Texture: Soft surfaces like cotton candy or ice cream will have smoother blends than hard, shiny surfaces like an apple. This will affect your color laydown, line work, blending, and color juxtaposition choices.

5. Draw what you see, not what you think: You might think you know what a cookie looks like, but when you really look at and see the subject, you'll note things like perspective, negative space, and lighting. So look, draw, and look again.