Warli Paintings

The technique to working on Warli art is as follows:

• Choose a design.
• Trace the chosen design on the tracing paper. Then copy the design onto the cloth or paper using a carbon sheet.
• If it is a cloth, then use metallic colors and let it dry well.
  Iron on the reverse side of the cloth.
• If it is paper, then use poster colors and leave it to dry.
• Draw outlines using white color and leave it to dry for 24 hours.
Marriage is one of the most important themes in Warli art. A Warli painting on marriage on clearly show their marriage god, Palghat, birds, trees, men and women dancing in circles, various celebrations. While the reaping season scene is shown by the laborers cutting the crop in the fields. On the other hand modern adaptations in Warli art include bicycles and transistors as well apart from Flora and fauna, musicians and agriculture being the traditional ones.

Earlier Warli painting used to be etched out on walls of Warli houses, but nowadays, they are being painted on paper, vases, mugs, bedsheets, apparel too. This art is pretty popular all over India and the world as well. Simple and aesthetic in appeal, Warli Art painting is back and gaining much wanted fame and name.
Warli Paintings are indigenous of Maharashtra. The word “Warli” come from the word “warla” which means the piece of land. Warli is the name of the biggest tribe found on the Northern outskirts of Mumbai.

Warli Paintings tradition of stretching goes back to 2500 or 3000 BC. Warli paintings are extremely rudimentary wall paintings. They use a very basic graphic vocabulary like a circle, a triangle and a square. These shapes come from the observation of nature and each symbolizes the influence of nature. The circle represents the sun and the moon; and the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Interestingly, the square obeys altogether a different logic. It depicts human invention, indicating a sacred enclosure or a piece of land. The central motif in the Warli ritual paintings usually have male gods and scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals