Artist’s tryst with colour and design on floor

Squatting on the floor, Veena Aithal silently goes about designing a beautiful portrait of Goddess Sharada on the floor for the Navarathri festival.

A self-taught Rangoli artist, she has not attended any special drawing classes.

"Rangoli art, rich in colour, is exquisite. Here Rangoli art is not just filling with colours and there are no dots. It is an art itself with colour powder," Veena Aithal told DH.

Every rangoli art she drew inspired her to do better the next time.

“I ventured into Rangoli art in November 2018. A classmate had posted a picture of Vamanavatara in my college friends group. Looking at it, I was inspired to take up rangoli art and began designing portraits on my own,” says Veena with a smile on her face.

“The floor is my canvas and fingers are like brushes for my art. Normally, I work on the artwork after 11 pm when all the household chores are completed. I work on my portraits for four to five hours daily. I took nearly 30 hours for the artwork on Goddess Sharada. It is not easy to draw with colour powders. The place where I sit should be free from dust and wind. All efforts will be rendered waste if there is a slight wind. Sometimes I take hours for just drawing eyes and mouth in a portrait in order to achieve the realistic effect," she explains passionately.

“I learnt the nuances of mixing colours on my own. It takes a lot of time to mix colours and get a better result for Rangoli artwork. When I design a portrait, it takes a lot of time for mixing the colours in order to get the skin colour,” she said.

She has drawn portraits of Pejawar seer Vishwesha Theertha swami, Dharmastala Dharmadhikari D Veerendra Heggade, S P Balasubrahmanyam, A P J Abdul Kalam, Lata Mangeshkar, 3D butterfly, lion, tiger, Kateel Durgaparameshwari, Lord Sri Rama and so on.