Warli Painting – A Cultural Epitome Of India

By Author: Lakshmi
Total Articles: 284
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This sensation is only created by the tribal women folk with love by showing the social life of human in olden days.

Sarees are globally famed traditional garments that are intermixed with every woman. Indian women exhibit their interest to wear different sarees. Warli paintings are the best garbs for the women who like to wear classical varieties.

Warli is a tribal art of painting which makes the cloth attractive. Warli sarees are painted beautifully with the immense of goodness and traditionalism.

Warli Painting is a folk traditional art, which is an epitome of Indian culture. In ancient times, this tribal art was practiced by women only. Now days, this art became a cultural epitome and a national heritage.

Some says its origin is northern outskirts of Mumbai and some says it is from coastal areas of Maharashtra but till today, no records of this art are found. But it is said that, the tribal women folk are from Warli city, which is located in Thane District, Maharashtra, India.

A Warli painting reflects the life style and communication which existed in the olden days of India.

Usually, ...
... Warli painting is prepared on mud walls. The artists use only one colour i.e., white. Warli painting can be done on walls, cups, clothes and other materials; sensuality and mythology do not mirrored or depicted in any of these paintings.

The basic materials such as fabrics, trace paper, metallic colours and carbon sheets are used for this painting. These paintings involves in very basic designs like circles, squares and triangles. A circle represents sun and moon, where the triangle represents mountains and temples, other indicates the human figures, god postures etc.

Firstly, they will choose the design. They use trace paper to draw the design that they required. After that, the design will be copied from the trace paper to the fabric using a carbon sheet.

After the designing process, they apply metallic colours to the designs. They will dry the fabric well.

Finally, they will draw the outlines or borders to the designs and again it will be dried for 24 hours. After dry, they will iron the fabric back side for smoothness and shining.

Now days, artists are using different colours, fabrics and natural or vegetable dyes for paintings, giving extra shine to the sarees. For designing, the motifs such as trees, birds, animals, flowers, temples, stones, beads, human figures and god postures are used.

They generally choose the scenes such as palghat, humans engaged in hunting, dancing, wedding, working, sowing and harvesting etc.

This painting process is such a simple and alluring art, but it exhibits traditional and royal look to the woman who wears it. Painting process mainly involves in the subjects like pujas, special occasions and weddings are transferred to the canvas.

This unique art is suitable for weddings, dinners, festivals and other grand occasions. Vegetable dyed pure paper silk sarees of this art are apt for corporate and social events.

We must salute the tribal women folk, for presenting this wonderful and marvellous art to us.