TECHNIQUES AND COLOURS

Indian paintings are classified by art critics partly geographically, but mainly by the terms of its techniques and its usage of colours. So, keeping these two things in mind let us see how Madhubani paintings flourished in this aspect.

Colours-

A world without colours would be so pale, dark and meaningless, isn’t it? Although colourless paintings or black and white paintings are beautiful but there’s a different pleasure in colours right? Colours mean so much to us and if you are an artist then you’ll surely agree me with this.

Natural colours

As I have already discussed that Madhubani paintings mainly derive their inspirations from day-to-day experiences and beliefs and surrounding environment in the same way, for colours also the artists depend on nature. Most of the Madhubani paintings have generally two colours, or only five colours. Colours like green, yellow, red, black, blue, white etc are used. Even till date the artisan of Madhubani paintings use natural colours directly from nature. For example, lamp soot serves as a source for black, while white colour is derived from powered rice, green is made from leaves, blue from the seeds of sikkot and indigo, yellow, a most common colour is derived from turmeric (i.e., haldi), bark of peepal is to be boiled to make a part of saffron colour, red on the other hand is made from kusum flower and red sandal wood. To make the painting last long as well as o take brightness they mixed gum with colour.

Techniques-

Each school of painting is identified by its Kalama (pen), meaning brush. The different styles of paintings are, therefore, referred to as of the Delhi, Deccani or kangra, etc, according to the character of its brush work. Unlike other schools, the Mithila School is unique. Earlier, the Madhubani artists used cotton tipped bamboo sticks and stiff twigs but now modern round brushes are used. The colours in the paintings are applied flat and the figures are rendered with double outlines with the space in between filled with thin crosshatchings or slanting lines.

 As, in my earlier post, I had already mentioned that Madhubani paintings mostly represent celestial deities, animals and human beings but there’s a slight difference in their painting techniques. Say for instance, human figures are mostly drawn abstract and linear while animals are usually naturalistic. Thus, this combination of naturalistic and yet abstract treatment especially of the highly conventionalized human from appears to be a significant feature of this art.