Cake Painting Tutorial – How to Paint on a Cake

Have you ever looked at a beautifully painted cake and thought, I could never do that? Well, I’m here to tell you—you absolutely can! Painting on fondant is easier than you might think, and it’s a wonderful way to add a personal, artistic touch to your cakes.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you step-by-step how to paint on cakes, with all of my favourite cake painting tips. From choosing the right paints and tools to tracing a design and painting on fondant. No fine arts degree required!

This technique allows you to hand paint any design you like in any colours you choose, so you can customise your painted cakes to match any theme or colour scheme.

The example I’m going to give you is for this boho-style painted cake design that I created for my niece’s birthday, but you can use this cake painting technique to paint any design you want onto your cake!

Looks fancy, right? But once you break it down, it’s actually not. I purchased this design, traced it onto the cake, and then it was basically paint-by-numbers.

If you’re great at drawing, you can use your own design, and if, like me, you’re better suited to simply tracing a printed-out design, you can do that too. 

And if you want to paint on cookies instead of a cake, I have a Painting on Cookies tutorial, too.

Ok cool, let’s get started!

What is the Best Edible Paint for Fondant?

I’ve used a bunch of different edible paints and also made my own, but by far my favourite edible paint for cakes is the Sweet Sticks Edible Art paints.

They’re glaze-based paints, which means that they dry completely and once they have dried, they won’t rub off. In my humble opinion, they’re the best paint for fondant cakes.

Before these were available on the market, I used to make my own glaze paint using confectioner’s glaze and powdered colouring and that’s a great option if you can’t get your hands on the Sweet Sticks paint. But these days, I very rarely make it myself. The ready-made paints are just so convenient.

One very important tip for using these paints: make sure you give them a good stir with a toothpick, and then shake them well before you use them. The colour tends to settle on the bottom of the bottle and isn’t always incorporated back in if you only give it a shake, and then the paint seems thin and lacks colour punch. This is especially important for metallic colours, but I do it for all of the matte colours now too.

It’s also important to make sure you have some high-strength alcohol on hand for thinning down the paint and for clean up afterwards (more about that below).

Other options for painting fondant include using powder colouring or gel food colouring mixed with vodka. I find those ok for doing small details on cakes, but I don’t recommend them for large and detailed designs like these.

Powder colour + vodka (or other alcohol) tends to rub off if you touch it once it’s dry, and gel colouring + vodka tends to stay slightly tacky. If you try to do a second coat or outline your design in black, then you’re likely to end up with messy streaks.

There are other water-based and alcohol-based paints on the market. I haven’t tested any of those so I’m not making recommendations, but if you’re choosing a different paint, try to find one that says it is smudge-proof.

cake Painting Tools and Equipment

Other than the paints, here’s what you’ll need for painting on a cake… 

• Paper and a pencil,
• Scissors or craft knife, ruler & cutting board
• Sellotape
• A paint palette or other container to put your paint into while you work
• Cake decorator’s alcohol (95% alcohol) or other high-strength alcohol such as Everclear – this is used to thin the paint. I like to use isopropyl alcohol to clean my brushes afterwards, but you shouldn’t use this to thin down the paint as it isn’t food-safe. Vodka isn’t high enough in alcohol.
• Pipette or dropper – for adding drops of alcohol (optional but very useful)
• Toothpicks or ice cream sticks for mixing the paint
• A small empty jar or plastic container – to put alcohol in to clean your paintbrush between colours
• and of course, some paintbrushes… 

Prepare Your Fondant Cake

Painting on a cake will be infinitely easier if you have a great base to work on. The straighter and smoother the sides on your cake, the easier it will be to trace your image neatly onto the cake.

I suggest ganaching your cake, as the ganache will give you a much firmer base than buttercream will, and be much easier to work on. Check out my How to Ganache a Cake post for info on ganaching a cake for perfectly straight sides.

Then once your ganache is set, you’ll need to cover your cake in fondant. My cake was an 8” tall, 6” round cake, and I wrapped it with fondant and let it dry.

It’s much easier to paint a detailed design on fondant than it is on buttercream, which is why I’m showing you how to paint on a fondant cake.

Prepare Your Image to Trace

Time to pick out your image. If you’re drawing the design yourself, then you’ll need to draw it onto a sheet of paper, and then trace it so that you have the reverse image (see more on this below).

For this cake, I purchased this pretty dreamcatcher clipart set off Etsy.

To make it easier to trace, you can choose a design that has a black outline, but if it doesn’t have one, you can just trace an outline around the edge yourself.

I decided not to do the whole dreamcatcher so I cropped the top section off, leaving me with just the feathers, ribbons and beads. I used Photoshop to do this, but any image editor with a crop tool will do the job. Then I resized the remaining image to fit my cake. I then traced that image onto another piece of paper, ignoring the last remaining part of the dreamcatcher ring and continued the strings and ribbons up to the top (you can see it in the photo below).

Print out your image onto regular A4 printer paper. Flip the paper over and hold it up against a window (or a lightbox, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those) and trace the design onto the back of the paper using a sharp pencil.

You don’t have to trace all of the very small details (for example with my image, I didn’t trace all the lines on the feathers or all of the lines on the braid) as you can add them in by eye when you paint the black outlines on your image.

At this stage, if you’re worried that you have dented your cake a bit with your knuckles, you can rub around the cake with a regular fondant smoother (or even a flexible fondant smoother will do) to smooth it out a bit. It won’t get all dents out as the fondant is set, but it does help a bit. It also has the bonus of helping transfer the pencil lines onto the cake, so you can even give it a rub even if you’re not worried about dents.

Double-check that you have traced over every line, and then you can remove the paper from the cake.

Exactly how you paint will depend on your pattern/design, but the basics will be pretty similar to what I did on this cake.

We’re going to ease into the whole painting thing by starting with just the outlines of the feathers. It’s helpful to keep the print-out of your image nearby so you can consult it if there are bits of line missing or if parts are too pale to see.

If, like me, you have unsteady or shaky hands, try experimenting with the best angle to hold your arm at, and where possible, rest your elbow on something. That could be the bench for the lower parts of the design, or an upturned bowl or something, just to prop your arm up so it’s not shaking like a broken tree branch in mid-air. 

I also find it helpful to hold my right wrist with my left hand while I am painting for a bit of extra support. Check out this post for more tips to keep your hand steady.

You don’t have to be too precise here, we will be outlining in black later, but it’s a good guideline for the next step which is…

…filling in the design. Use strokes of varying thicknesses for a bit of detail. I also thinned my paint down a bit to start with, then added in more strokes of the full-strength paint. See, it’s almost like we know what we’re doing!

Now all that’s left to do is outline the whole thing in black. You don’t need to outline if your design doesn’t need it, but boy does it really make it pop!

This is probably the fiddliest part, but I’m going to encourage you to look super closely at my cake and see that there are a fair few dodgy bits, that most people would never notice at first glance.

So remember that the design as a whole will distract from a few slips here and there. Really. I promise. Don’t panic!

Make sure you work from left to right if you’re right-handed, or right to left if you’re a leftie, the last thing you want here is smudged black across your design!

Refer to your original design for any additional details that you didn’t trace, and add those in.

It’s hard to see in the pictures but I added a bit of the Edible Art rose gold metallic paint on the peachy-coloured beads. Because a bit of shimmer is always welcome.

The outlines really tie the whole design together and make it pop.

More Cake Decorating Tutorials You May Like…

• To get stunning coloured cakes without fondant, I can show you how to colour ganache in any colour you like.
• If you want to try painting a watercolour cake but you’re a bit nervous, try this simple watercolour cake that uses… no water 🤭.
• For more painted fondant techniques, have a look at my Painting on Cookies tutorial, because those techniques can be used for hand painting on cakes, too.
• See all of my Cake Decorating Tutorials here.