Make way for food miniacs

These mouth-watering creations are a hit online. Miniature artists tell Tini Sara Anien about what goes into these designs

A chocolate basket replica by Agnika Banerjee.

A clock with miniature foods by Uma Gayathri.  

A jumbo meal miniature designed by Saranya Sridhar.

We have all drooled over food miniatures on social media, haven’t we? South Indian meal showpieces, burger combo magnets, chips packet earrings — the possibilities are unlimited online. These miniatures are awe-inspiring for their cuteness quotient.

Miniature artists, popularly known as miniacs, say years of experience go into the designing process and it can take from a few hours to a couple of days, to complete a design.

Coimbatore-based Saranya Sridhar has been making miniatures for eight years now — she vouches that designing hyper-realistic models are challenging. “Though there has been drastic improvement over the years, I often hold my breath or don’t blink my eyes, when working on something so small,” she says.

Colour, texture, and the scale or proportion are dominating factors in miniatures. Saranya, who has 1.28 lakh Instagram followers, loves making dosa and idli miniatures for the south Indian palate, and pani puri/vada pav for the north Indian one. She designs earrings, magnets and collectibles with these models.

“Magnets or collectibles take more time than earrings. When making a pair of chocolate earrings, you just need to make the chocolate and cover it with a mini wrapper. But in the case of a south Indian mini tiffin model, one needs to make different elements like the dosa, idli, chutney (mustard and chilli) and sambar (with realistic pieces of drumstick, tomatoes and onion),” she adds.

Despite experience, any new design goes through a trial and error process, she shares. “When making a new design, it takes 2 or 3 attempts to match its colour and texture to the actual food item. The varied colours of Indian dishes are a continuous inspiration for my designs,” she adds.

Saranya, who also makes packaged food miniatures, says these are easier to make than cooked food replicas. “Getting the shade and details like logos and fonts to make these hyper-realistic, comes with practice.”

Some of Kolkata-based Agnika Banerjee’s most popular designs are inspired by international food brands like Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, Starbucks, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s Pizza. “Some commissioned orders that were my favourites included Korean Ramen with Kimchi Miniature, a miniature cheeseboard, and an Air India flight meal-inspired miniature,” she adds.

It was in 2017, when she was looking for a unique gift for her mother’s birthday, when she chanced upon food miniature designs online. “I thought of making a miniature birthday cake for her. After this, I made more and everyone started appreciating them. Soon enough, I left my monotonous job and became a fulltime miniature artist,” she adds.

Agnika has sold her miniatures across the country, and USA, UK, Canada, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, and Australia. “I also have a YouTube channel to guide beginners,” she adds.

The pandemic fuelled interest in the world of miniatures among many, observes Agnika. “Clay sculpting is considered to be therapeutic. It became a stress-buster for many during that period,” she adds.

Design process

Kirti Basal from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, is a foodie and started making food miniatures in 2019. She enjoys the process and “learns new techniques” every day. “I spend time looking for reference photographs of the item. I source close-up and staged photos of the food to effectively emulate them,” she elaborates.

She then draws the idea on paper. “I observe the colours and texture of the food, as it is important to get the colour and texture right. A minor change can make it look unrealistic.” After this, she starts working on the design with polymer clay. Her recent miniatures of Deepavali sweets were a hit.

Colour plays a major role in making any miniature realistic, Saranya adds. “If I add more colours to vegetables while designing a miniature meal, it will look raw, as certain colours change after baking/drying the clay.” Even the size of a brush used matters in a design — brushes with thin hair will be required for minute detailing, she adds.

Agnika takes an average of 5-6 hours to sculpt a miniature in her existing range of products. “If I receive an order for a customised item, then I take more time to shape the design according to the customer’s need and expectations,” she adds.

Different avatar

Chennai-based Uma Gayathri of Instagram page Mythris Gleams, designs clocks with miniatures of food items, and wooden spatula decor with these models on them. “Apart from the miniatures, making the base of these products takes around a day to make a clock,” she adds.

She also makes thematic miniatures for marriages, birthdays, baby showers, offices etc. “Shading is an important part of miniatures. Choosing apt colours for the items, clay conditioning and shaping, texturing, shading and glazing the clay, all matter equally,” Uma adds.

Tools used

Most of the designers use polymer clay, modelling tools, tweezers, scissors, micro-tip pens and needle, everyday items like toothpicks, toothbrushes and foil, acrylic paints, oil colours, chalk pastels, and printed wrappers in their designs. Pasta machines, rolling pins, shape cutters, and an oven for baking the polymer clay, are other essentials.

Popular miniacs

Some popular miniature pages from across the world on social media are theyellowbrush, minimemoribilia, bagaway.19, TinyPic, cristina_hampe_minis, zerehlaljiminiatures, Tomo Tanaka, tanaka_tatsuya, and sugarcharmshop.