Barista Lee Kang-bin is taking coffee art to the next level, recreating miniatures of famous paintings, including Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, on foamy cups of java at his central Seoul cafe.

With meticulous strokes of tiny brushes and spoons, Lee, 26, recreates the likes of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Edvard Munch’s The Scream using thick cream stained with food colouring atop a cup of coffee. It takes him 15 minutes to paint the cream.

Lee started brewing coffee when he was 17, during his mandatory military service, and enjoyed it so much that he bought a coffee machine and opened his first cafe for fellow soldiers in his camp near the border with North Korea.

South Korea’s coffee consumption has nearly doubled since 1990. ‘Customers usually ask me to draw their favourite artworks,’ he says.

After all, who wouldn’t want this work of art?