In the middle of Melbourne’s never-ending lockdown in 2020, I found myself missing the simple ritual of brunch. I missed those weekends spent catching up with friends over the comfort of an overpriced breakfast and a strong oat milk latte.
With nowhere to go and too much time on my hands, I finally pulled out an old canvas and a box of long-forgotten acrylic paints. The result was a simple painting, reminiscent of brunch. In hindsight, it was probably a subconscious ode to normalcy and to the small moments that mattered more than I realised at the time.
The moment of inspiration
As someone who paints on and off, one of the biggest challenges I face when staring at a blank canvas is figuring out what to paint.
I haven’t quite defined my style yet, but I’ve noticed I tend to sit somewhere between realism and surrealism. Although, I do find myself drawn to still life. I really love studying the way light and shadow play across everyday objects.
The idea for this painting happened while I was scrolling through old photos on my phone. I came across a food flatlay I’d taken at a brunch a while back and I felt nostalgic. I wanted to paint something that felt familiar and brunch just made sense.
The painting process
The first thing I did was sketch the brunch elements onto the white canvas with a HB pencil. Once I was happy with the layout, I mixed up a yellow and a green to start blocking in some colour.
Strategically, I decided to start with the napkins and added some shadows to bring out the folds. I tackled them first because I know drapery isn’t exactly my forte and I figured it was better to get the tricky part done first.
After adding the shadows to the napkins, I went back in with some white paint to bring out the highlights and folds. Around the same time, I started working on the details in the croissant and the coffee. The goal here was to slowly build up the texture and depth of these elements. To balance out the composition, I also colour-blocked the waffles.
I kept working on the croissant, blending the highlights and shadows to give it more shape and texture. Once that felt right, I moved on to the waffles and cutlery. I’d originally planned to place a butter knife under the croissant plate, but ended up scrapping that idea and replacing it with a fork instead.
Also, getting the waffle texture right was a lot trickier than I expected! It took a few tries to capture that slightly indented, gridded look.
My next challenge came in the form of the berries on the waffles. Surprisingly, these took me even longer to paint than the napkins! What started as flat blobs of colour had to somehow become berry-like shapes. I was seriously starting to doubt my decision to add waffles at this point.
I think by now it was day three or four, and I found myself needing to step away between sessions and come back with fresh eyes each time.
By day five, I let go of trying to make everything perfect and just wanted to see the painting finished. I played around with a few colour options for the table and saucer before settling on white crockery against a soft white-grey table.
I went back and refined a few areas, adding more light and shadow to bring out the realism. At this point, I was pretty much done and happy with how it all turned out.
The outcome
And there we have it—one of my lockdown paintings.
Looking back, that was such a strange and surreal time to be alive. With physical social interaction off the table, a lot of us turned inward and reignited old creative habits at home. For me, the silver lining of having so much time and nowhere to go was being able to reconnect with my love of painting.
Ever since the world opened up again, I haven’t managed to finish another full canvas with this level of detail. I’m genuinely grateful I had the space and time to create this when I did.
Final thoughts
In the end, this painting turned out to be a little time capsule from a pretty strange chapter of life.
Every time I look at it, I think of those long days locked away in my apartment. Funny enough, I actually didn’t plan for it to have any deeper meaning. I just really missed brunching with my friends and needed something to do.
But now as I write this post five years later, it’s funny how those little memories end up sticking with you.
