More Chocolate, and Wood Grain

I have put the brushes down for the night, and tomorrow will work on either the tonalist paintings (if they're dry!) or the genre stuff, or both... The dessert paintings are too wet for me to go any further, so I'll take a break from them for a few days.

On the painting below, I paid careful attention to the little tiny round chocolate things, trying to make them look as 3-dimensional as possible. Also added some depth to the pudding by darkening some receding areas.

 Pot de Crème, Guilty Pleasures Series, © 2020, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

Now, the thought of painting every single line of tiny wood grain in the works that have a wooden tabletop has been the main reason I've been avoiding the little desserts. But yesterday I spotted a slightly messed-up brush, one that I hadn't cleaned properly, and realized I could use it on the smaller wood grain areas. So I mixed some glaze medium in with the brown pigments and dragged the brush across this surface:

Hot Fudge Sundae I, Guilty Pleasures Series, © 2020, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

Of course, I'd tried something similar on the Cherry Cobbler painting a couple of months back, but with a heavier hand, and I pretty much loathe the way it looks now. But the glaze medium softened the paint and the stiff bristles created just the right spacing for the smaller grin lines.