CHENNAI: I don’t enjoy limiting my plate. I love trying lesser-known dishes, exploring cuisines and savouring a plate of food where every bite feels new and fresh. Because food is a mood!” says Atashi Saini. It’s this principle, of being experimental, which the creative taps on while creating illustrative works of mouthwatering food.
When I open the food illustrator’s Instagram page @AtashiDraws, I start craving for a slice of decadent sesame lavender swirl tea cake, some warm daal baati churma, caramel custard and the joy-giving daal makhani. With strokes and splashes from a warm and vibrant colour palette — filled with details of gravy speckles, boiled grains, sprinkled garnishes, sauce drips, crispy crusts — the artist strikes a fine balance between capturing too much and too little detail. Her renderings are delightful, some deconstructed and some playfully scattered, offering us an altered yet appetising perspective of the food elements.
“Being experimental with my food choices has helped me draw better. To capture the essence of a food item through illustrations isn’t simple. If not done right, it could be repelling (if that isn’t the brief). So to recreate something from a plate on a canvas and make it appear mouthwatering, I need to understand the ingredients, its texture and scale,” explains Atashi, who has been creating these art pieces since 2017. What started as a final year college project, to create a food campaign, soon turned into a passion project and there’s been no looking back for the creative.
Atashi’s artworks are primarily digitally rendered. However, she also enjoys dabbling with traditional mediums like soft pastels and pen and ink. “While I enjoy making the food appear appetising, I am not keen on making it hyper-realistic. We have photographs to achieve that. My idea is to make the art piece emotive and engage people’s senses. I give a simplified and minimal direction to my works. Shape, form and details take precedence,” says the creative, who holds a degree in fine arts and animation from the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.
While every food illustration assumes different styles, research is the main ingredient that defines it further, she says. “Over time, I have had the opportunity to work with an international clientele and expand my culinary horizons. In the process, I usually search for the recipes of the dishes, especially if it’s lesser-known to me. I understand the myriad elements, chalk a sketch of it in my mind and then start drawing. So, looking for references through cookbooks, cooking videos, visiting cooking festivals, and other resources becomes essential. Once you understand the structure, ingredients and texture, it becomes easier to give it a style of your choice. Then you lace it with other features like crockeries and keep practising!” she shares.
While food illustrators in other parts of the globe seem to be enjoying a renaissance of sorts, here, the sunny side is not up. But opportunities are trickling in, one recipe postcard, one cookbook and book cover at a time, it seems. “I have worked on cookbooks, packaging for food businesses, book covers, recipe cards, restaurant posters, and social media features. However, unlike the steady stream of takers for portraits, those for food illustrations are very limited. It is a niche that is yet to swell. If more avenues open up, I would love to design and create food illustrations for clothing, prints for kitchen essentials, murals for café interiors and more,” she says, adding that there is room for possibilities.
“I urge budding food artists to keep going. Look for inspiration in your everyday meal and of course, the countless artists you come across on social media. Click food pictures and draw them…that’s a great way to get started. Make art that is enjoyable not just for others but also to you and share it with the outside world,” she concludes.
To get your taste buds tingled, visit Instagram page @atashidraws