‘Food for Thought’(Henry Brooks)

A chocolate painting by

tinteart.

When chocolate was introduced to Europe, it was enjoyed by the decadent, and as it grew in popularity became more available.However, there was a big boost in the slave trade to deal with the ever increasing demand for cocoa. Chocolate was a whole new way for people to be exploited.

The man in the portrait is Henry Brooks, born into slavery and painted entirely with dark and white chocolate.

A lot of time and care has gone into making Henry Brooks, and getting his features drawn right proved to be quite difficult.

Took me a few days to get him looking right with a pencil, then I started blocking in the colour by using a base coat of dark chocolate applied with a scraper.

The next stage was to add tone to his features, to get the contours and shapes right.

I mainly used my fingers for this, a good way to blend the chocolate together, as the warmth in my fingertips helped to keep it pliable.

The tone was built up gradually layer by layer, I left his eyes and mouth until after I had most of his skin worked on as I knew they would be difficult to get right.

I had the basic shape and tones of his eyes filled in, I just needed to blend it all together, and try and capture his facial expression, which was mainly present in his eyes.

Henry Brooks face is almost finished, as you can see more tones and lines have been added, and his mouth has been filled in.

His left eye needs more work, and his ear needs shading, by this point I’m adding on detail with a thin brush.

Henry’s face is finished! The details have been added to his eyes and ear, and white chocolate has been applied with a palette knife for his hair and moustache.

The stubble on his chin is also white chocolate but applied in a different way, the interesting result being that when you run your fingers over it, it feels rough like stubble.

The finished article, he’s been given a textural and warm looking background, and his clothes have been painted in.

I then coated him with a couple layers of confectioners glaze to protect him from any environmental damage.