. Bakeries and Sweetshops. We love them! Most people do. In fact, what comes to mind when you think of bakeries and sweetshops? Pink walls with colourful jars? Cream, chocolate chips and doughnuts behind sneeze-guards infront of you? I bet you can even smell the pastries, and your teeth are probably falling out just from the thought of it!
. But - as there is always one if such an item can start so positively - how many of these fluffy pink sweetshops have you seen lately? How many bakeries with anything original? I bet you can think of very few.
. Most bakeries only make (they say) and sell cakes that are guaranteed to sell. In other words, if they sell enough of one cake, that cake won't leave stands for ages. Word of mouth then gets around, and the cake is then praised for longer. This is sad for the consumer: they're fed the same rubbish all the time. If their teeth are going to fall out, atleast have the cause be due to eating more amazing and original cakes.
. As for sweet shops, where do you go when you want sweets? Newsagents, grocery stores, the like. And what do you get? A Mars bar? Maltesers? A Toblerone? Yes, that is my shopping list, because I am also guilty of this, but aside from that, from the brand names, what else is there? Where are all the Humbugs? Sherbet Lemons? Even just those little flourescent tubes full of pure sugar? They're so hard to find, but the vast majority of shops will only stock brandnames and own-brands that they know will sell, leaving the rest of us without the old days' nostalgia.
. So it comes down to the consumers getting managed with brand-name chocolates that all look the same, and little variety in bakeries and cake shops. It can also be suggested to be the consumers' fault that this has happened, although it was in fact inevitable.
. However, although this is bad for the consumer, it does have a few upsides - for the people among us, here on deviantART.
. Below are thumbs of pieces of art - photography, paintings, culinary, jewelry and the like - by people here on deviantART. They show the influence of what bakeries do and don't sell and how the lack of nostalgic sweets have impacted our work. For example, =DianaCretu's 'Candy I' - inspired by a strawberry and cream sweet. Simple but effective - and when was the last time you walked into a casual sweetshop/grocery store and saw any of these? And what about *leAlmighty's ' Peer Pressure '? Where did these twisted liquorice laces go? There are plenty more photographs below that show the same point.
. Let us move onto Traditional and Digital works: *Sage-of-Winds' 'Cuppy Cake' painting shows an even better version of what is sold in bakeries these days - however, have you noticed, these sort of things only come out on special occasions and don't stay for long? Although, from a marketing view, it's a good thing, as they sell like hot cakes - pardon the pun - and income is higher, everso slightly atleast. This also lets us artists become ever more creative, with so much more to work with. ~Irudisu's 'Sweet Girl', little cupcakes and sweets floating around the girl, holding a cookie, almost tempting the art observer and making them choose between the girl or the sweets, both as worthy of your time as the other. Which would you choose? (The sweets, of course!) Very original paintings from ~Envy-Or-Erotic, like 'Sweets??', cubist in my opinion (I am relatively untrained - I never payed much attention to my teachers so I may be wrong), have taken the shapes and colours of basset's liquorice allsorts and weaved them in and about eachother, however it is still clear what it is a painting of. All fantastic work.
. Jewelry making seems to be becoming an ever popular form of art on deviantART lately, and a lot of the jewelry seems to be based around sweets and cakes! Gorgeous. A personal favourite of mine is the works of ~PORGEcreations, her ' Pink Doughnut Bracelet ' is to die for, as are her delicious 'Choc Chop Cookies' earrings. Influenced by the more simple side of bakeries - but, how often do you see pink doughnuts in a bakery that look that good? Another of my favourites is *chat-noir: 'Strawberry Sponge Cake Charms' just make me hungry, I'm a sucker for swiss rolls, and the detail is stunning - these are also less common in bakeries, it's the sort of thing your mum or nana would make you to go with your tea. 'Superhero Cupcakes' on the other hand is just plain original, and you definitely don't find them in bakeries. Even in the most independant bakeries who are renowned for originality.
. Then there is, of course, the culinary artists. A huge part of this article and feature. These are the people who make the cakes that bakeries are either too afraid to sell through possibility of little profit, or are unable to sell due to some bakers perhaps not being as skilled as those modest people among us. I have a huge number of names I'd love to drop here, but the likes of ~pinkshoegirl, ~megilwenn, ~Erisana, and ~cupcakeninja811 are some of the more prominent ones.
. ~pinkshoegirl's ' Princess Castle Cake ' is just majestic and looks inedible, just too good, and her 'Rocket Ship Cake' (being a secret cosmos nut) I find to be so cute - especially the little aliens floating around it, and the fire looks amazing. You don't find many cakes like these in bakery windows.
. ~megilwenn's 'Barrel Cake' really caught my eye, I think it was the colour of the "water" and just how original it was, and almost the whole thing is fondant. Also, although it was rushed it still looks wonderful, 'Daffodil Cake' - I did think those Daffodils were real.
. ~Erisana's '360 Controller Cake' is a wonder in shape and looks delicious and realistic, and her World of Warcraft cookie and birthday cake are just divine!
. And last but not least, ~cupcakeninja811. Her works are exquisite, her 'Fondant Animal Cake' looks awesome, with little fondant polarbears and penguins, and her 'Chocolate Box' is definitely one of the winners!

. Overall, while I started out as being negative about the lack of variety in bakeries and the decline in traditional sweetshops, it is a good thing for us. The bakeries allow us to be imaginative with our own home-baking and we can therefore make money out of it also. Bakeries won't worry because they have better advertising and actual stores and the like than we do - that doesn't make them better though, no way. And with the nostalgic, gorgeous, colourful sweets of the old days becoming ever harder to find, when we do find them they are all the more sweeter for it, and all the artwork that stems from them becomes all the more original and nicer to look at. Would you rather hang a huge painting in your house of a Mars bar wrapper, or of a jar of colourful sweeties? Which is more appealing?


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Bits and Bobs







Thank you everyone who participated in the thread I posted in the thumbs forum, and to everyone who responded to the notes and gave me permission to use these works. ~blacklava.