For an art which depicts the daily lives of a tribal community, it is natural that it should depict some festivals that they celebrate, too. This painting depicts the villagers celebrating the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. I hope you like it.
Warli: Ganesh Chaturthi
This painting style has recently become quite popular around the world, and can be easily distinguished by the white figurines painted on a dark background. For the uninitiated, this is Warli Art. I have already posted a Warli painting on my blog, which you can check out here. In that blog I have already written at length about the traditions and customs that relate to these painting, so I will not talk much about it here.
Warli is the name of a tribal community who live in village in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Even to this day, their lives remain very simple. Many still live in mud huts plastered with dried cow dung. And it is on these walls that these paintings were originally made using a slurry made of rice flour.
This painting, as I have mentioned before, depicts the villagers celebrating the local festival of ‘Ganesh Chaturthi,’ in honour of the elephant god Ganesha – the god of auspicious beginnings. I have slightly diverged from the traditional Warli pattern, but I shall talk about that later. The painting has been made using acrylic colours on canvas. I have painted the background using a very dark shade of green. In traditional paintings the backgrounds are always dark brown, owing to the colour of the mud walls. However, in normal practice, you can use any dark colour.
I have mainly used a 00 brush for the painting, and a 01 or 02 brush for the larger details. One important thing about this, is the consistency of the white paint. It must right in the middle. If it is too thick, it will be very difficult to paint the finer details. If it is too watery, the paint will lose its intensity against the dark background, and the painting will look dull.
Let me now talk about the pattern. This painting is slightly more intricate than the traditional ones. The presence of two borders is rare. The depiction of the moon is usually a simple one, with a circle and a crescent painted on one side. Here, the moon is a little larger and more elaborate. And this is the thing I love about Warli art. It is extremely versatile, and completely up to you to decide the level of intricacy. You only need a couple of colours and just two brushes to create a masterpiece. A simple painting with large figures soothes the eyes, and an intricate one with lots of details offers you something new every time you look at it.
Outro:
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