Miniature artist and display designer Omkar Umesh Ghate takes over a corner of Instagram with his detailed and masterly models of city buildings and scenes
The Dean’s Bungalow at Sir JJ School of Art is 8 inches high and 7 inches deep on a scale of 5 mm to 1 ft
Your attention is bound to be grabbed by the sight of an artist bent over model buildings of varying architectural styles; his unwavering focus ensures his steady hand creates miniatures of all kinds — familiar-looking streetscape from Bandra’s bylanes, structures in SoBo, the neighbourhood chai stall, sights on your daily commute, and even corners of your home. Omkar Umesh Ghate’s miniature world is like the one we’re living in. The 25-year-old miniature model maker, freelances across television and advertising industries, creating miniature sets for movies, web series and commercials.
Ghate’s extremely detailed finishes on his creations are hard to miss. Note the surface textures mimicking the real deal, paper taking the form of iron fences and tiny T-shirts, not made from cloth, caught flying in the wind on the clothesline. It’s a picture-perfect world that seems all too real; you’d expect a tiny head to pop out the window of these structures, annoyed by your inquisitiveness. The detailed time-consuming models that he’s shared on Instagram took 10 to 12 days; he adds that more time yields better results. Yet, he modestly glosses over the amount of effort for each project, only revealing, “Observation and restraint are very important when making miniature models.”
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With an interest in art and craft as a child, Ghate would save whatever paper he could find, a favourite being wedding cards, to transform them into smaller worlds. Today, he’s armed with paper, M-Seal, ice-cream sticks, paint and sunboard, rubber and MDF sheets. Sharing details about his work process, Ghate, a resident of Diva, says, “It starts with a sketch; you must scale a large structure down to a model. Scaling is important to ensure you get the proportions right. After that, you make it.”
The pandemic hit just when Ghate completed his degree in display design and stagecraft from JJ School of Art in 2020. He tells us that material was not easy to source, and work was affected too. But with the help of college seniors and teachers who offered direction and passed along opportunities, Ghate and his batchmates were able to bag projects. Now, he and his peers are known in the industry. Having done commercials for different brands, title tracks of webseries and stop-motion animation with miniature sets, his work keeps him busy and satisfied. Ghate’s focus is on continued growth. He expresses, “We work hard in this field and always move towards improvement. I started from zero, so I’m not afraid of losing. I keep experimenting and creating.” Starting an Instagram page was a crucial step; it helped get his work out to a wider audience. With just 50 posts, the page already has over 3,000 followers. Recently, Ghate and his colleague, Anil Sukhdev Rathod, started a miniature design studio called Sharp Cutter, which is open for commissions and projects. One of their highlights is the quote ‘If you rest, you rust’.
Over the weekend, he escapes to the mountains. On his Instagram account, the sheer contrast of Ghate hunched over miniature models and trekking to some of Maharashtra’s highest points is a delight to witness. Ghate ruminates, “The two loves — miniature designs and trekking — seem different, but nature teaches you so much including understanding different textures and colours. They go hand-in-hand in that way.”
Log on to @omkara.creations and @_sharpcutter_ to place commissions
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