Affogato Sundae of Caffé Panna
There’s a cafe bar that serves Italian-inspired affogato sundaes in New York. This store serve daily changing flavors. . I was fortunate enough to be able to make an illustration for Café Panna. This cafe bar/ice cream shop was even featured in one of the Food Insider’s videos:
So from an artist’s view point, if I’m to describe this kind of food, that would be “collision of hot & cold”. As an illustrator, my sole purpose is pretty much make the picture not look like one of the normal ice cream illustrations. Rather I had to bring out all the things that makes affogato look more like “affogato” If you happen to want to improve your drawing skills, these are very important tips to keep in your mind. Basically the art of drawing is the art of tricking people’s perception. What you want to do when you are illustrating is to try to make certain parts stand out. These are the parts that makes the object look like the way it looks.
With the same school of thought, I came to realize that there are two things that would make the illustration better of an illustration; steam & stream. These are the two things that set the affogato apart from regular ice cream, not just as a drawing, but also as food. With this logic, if I perfect the coffee and its steam, the illustration will look even better.
Finalized Image of the Affogato Sundae. I focused on coffee and steam. As the stream of coffee goes down on ice cream, the steam rises up.
One of the great things about illustrations is that the illustrator has controls over any object in the picture. In this case of this hot & cold treat, I was able to draw the steam in a position where it doesn’t block the main part of the picture. I was also able to draw a very smooth coffee stream.
Since I made this illustration so that they can also use it on websites or any other purposes. I did some detailed drawing so the image can be partially cropped and enlarged. Drawing whip cream was surprisingly calming. There is something about drawing a soft object. It requires a gentle pressure when drawing.
Enlarged image of Affogato Sundae. The whip cream melts with the coffee.
Overall it was a fun experience to draw this affogato sundae. There are many things to draw in the world, but I am glad that I had an opportunity to do ice cream this time.