What does home look like to the animals who share it with us?
For The Plated Project’s Feels Like Home collection, Kritika Mittal was commissioned to create a series of illustrated cat and dog bowls in collaboration with Essajees Atelier. The collection brought together interiors, architecture and animal companionship, with proceeds supporting efforts to feed stray animals across India.
The brief was to create illustrations that brought together two worlds: the places we call home and the animals who make them feel that way.
The collection explored home through two distinct settings. The smaller bowl brought the indoors to life. Drawing from selected Essajees Atelier projects, Kritika incorporated interior details, architectural elements and carefully chosen colour palettes to create a sense of warmth and familiarity. The larger bowl took the story outdoors, featuring homes, fountains and lush greenery. Cats and dogs inhabited these settings, each drawn with its own personality and expression.
Drawing animals extensively was new territory for Kritika. The challenge wasn't simply to illustrate them, but to give each one a distinct character while making the animals, architecture, and surrounding details feel like part of the same world. Moreover, illustrating for a ceramic bowl is very different from creating artwork on a flat page. The surface curves away from the viewer, changing how the illustration is seen and how its elements relate to one another. Kritika had to plan each composition around the shape of the bowl, ensuring that the architectural details, interiors, greenery and animal characters flowed naturally across the surface. Every element needed to feel connected, without the overall design becoming too busy.
It was an exercise in balancing illustration with product design, where the form of the object was as important as the artwork it carried.
The ‘Feels Like Home’ collection was created to raise funds to feed stray animals across India. The project went on to help feed hundreds of strays, giving the collaboration a purpose beyond the finished products. For Kritika, it was an opportunity to step beyond her familiar territory, explore a new subject and translate her illustrations into functional objects that people could connect with. The result was a collection that brought together architecture, animal character and thoughtful product design, all in support of a cause close to her heart.
Client: The Plated Project
Artist: Krittika Mittal
Collaboration: Essajees Atelier
Services: Illustration