Why sweets?
The reason why I decided to draw sweets is that, as I often make sweets, I realized that there are lots of struggles of pastry chefs, and I thought it was a big issue that people's awareness of the hardness of making sweets is not enough.
In order to visualize the hardness, I first tried to draw all the processes of making sweets, such as weighing, mixing, and baking. However, after I started drawing, I realized how difficult it is to visualize them because all phases engage many movements. It seemed to be impossible to describe them without words description and express them only with the visual images within just a 1-inch square. (For example, put the dough in the refrigerator overnight or mix it from the bottom. It is difficult to visualize these processes only with a drawing.)
However, I still wanted to visualize the hardness of making sweets, so I changed my perspective. I thought hardship was proportional to time, so I drew sweets themselves and categorized them based on the time to cook them.
How I chose 100 sweets
In the first step, I had to decide which sweets to draw. Since the purpose of this project was to let viewers know how difficult it is to make sweets, I first chose sweets that I had made and found difficult and that I had not been able to make because of a high degree of difficulty. Then, I added sweets that tended to be more expensive since most expensive sweets are generally more labor-intensive. In the final steps, I also added sweets that are relatively easy for us to get because I thought it was necessary for people to realize that sweets are actually made with a lot of time and effort.
How I drew
First, to gain inspiration, I searched for images of sweets and traced their shape one by one (I used an application called ibis paint). For coloring, I used digital watercolor and piled many colors so viewers could recognize each sweet as real.
I tried to draw them as real as possible because I wanted viewers to reflect on their emotions or feelings when they encountered the sweets. For this purpose, I was particular about hand drawings, not just tracing, because I thought drawings need to be seen as somehow different from the real photos because I wanted viewers to see sweets with their fresh perspectives.
In the next step, I categorized them by cooking time. I finalized them by adjusting the size of the drawings and uploaded them to the website.
