Design Resource
Palm Leaf Painting - Bhubaneshwar, Orissa
Talapatra Chitra
by
Making Process
The palm leaves are dried under sun for two to three months. They are cut to the required sizes, soaked in water for days and treated with a solution of turmeric, ensuring the long last of the palm leaves and the painting. Once the leaves are dried, they are ready to be painted. The palm leaves are tied together to form a zigzag form of a scroll. Once the palm leaves (strips) are tied together a scene from one of the traditional stories is depicted in the drawing. The drawing is carefully done with appropriate spacing and with details of figures giving prominence to the hairstyle, ornaments, flora and fauna and elements that relate to nature. The painting on palm leaves is a unique process, unlike the regular paintings, a sharp pointed iron tool is used to etch the drawing on the brittle surface of the leaf, making sure that it doesn’t go wrong or the leaf doesn’t break, the color is spread or rubbed all over the leaves with the help of piece of cotton cloth. The scroll is cleansed and wiped with cloth giving it a fine black color to the carved lines leaving the rest of surface clean. The artists on occasion, to give it a stencil like appearance. This requires a great deal of accuracy and skill, as the palm leaf is brittle and has reversing grains interfering with a smooth usage of the cutting blade. Such beautifully positioned cut outs make the painting even more intricate and lace like. Sometimes the artists use colour to beautify the painting by coloring with natural colours. The colors are prepared by the artists. There are five basic colors they use white, black and primary colors- red, blue and yellow. The color white is prepared from conch shell, soot from lamp that is lamp black with oil makes black color. Colors from vegetables are extracted as well, for green color green leaves like neem (azadirachta indica) are boiled and mixed with water and gum to prepare the color. Addition of color and cut out technique are all the developments of recent times compared to the oldness of the art and have taken this form of art to another level.
