Behind the Scenes of Daily Sculpting Miniature Fruit and Veggies

Hello Folks 🙂

I’ve been sculpting for 130 days now and sometimes it drives me insane.

Today I’d like to share a bit about the creative process behind the project. One of the main concern I get when I talk about this challenge is Are you going to be able to find enough different fruits and vegetables?
Of course! I then answer in a laugh.

Here’s how I find new fruits and vegetable inspiration :
I started off by looking what fruits and vegetables are in season, so I check locally what is produced but also check online. I still check every month for seasonal fruit 🙂
Once I did those, I went to look for odd fruits and heirloom varieties.
From there I hopped onto the exotic fruit wagon.
And by now I’m looking more specifically per region, for instance, “brazilian fruit”.

In case you’re addicted to fruits, here’s my pinterest board.

Right now, I’m making lists of say the next 10 or so fruit and veggies I’m going to sculpt and so I’ll follow the list and pick one per day. (or more if I have time and motivation)
First I check the size, usually using wikipedia and looking at pictures of the fruit hold in a hand or on a market stand.
I convert it into 1:12 scale, as this is the scale i’m working in and put this in a little note book.

Depending on the difficulty I pause and think how to proceed.
Should I use the caning technique? how many times am I going to bake said fruit? does it resemble something I already did before? Do I have to mix new colors or can I work from what I have? and so on.

And then I just go on and do it 🙂
Is it over yet? ha! I wish!

Once it’s baked and cooled, I then proceed to take pictures of the fruit in a neat arrangement. I have many different papers for background (paper freak, moi? well yes) and also cool wooden spoons and other props to give a sense of size. My fingers and hands, they are… well let’s just say I sculpt too much haha!

Once the miniature has been photographed, it is uploaded on my computer and goes through post-processing. (lightroom and photoshop)
Finally, the winning picture is posted on my dedicated tumblr.

Pfew!
See, this is why I’m trying right now to sculpt a few fruit and veggies at a time, so I can at least save time on baking, photographing, post-processing and posting.

Hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes!

xx
Stéphanie
—
PetitPlat webshop / Instagram / Facebook