Continuing the journey through WilderIndia!!

The second little cutie pie in the book (WilderIndia)  is 'Moru' as you may have guessed Moru is a peacock!! (Mor means peacock in Hindi and Marathi ) A prince at that! now while I do not intend to give out the story here, I will let on this much, the story is quite action packed! Well I think I am done with the exclamation marks :) !!!

© 2011 WilderIndia
Illustration © Nayna Shriyan

            Before we go on to the amazing characters in this story and the fun we had visualizing and creating each of them, I want to tell you about the unique medium we used. Moru happens to be not just the national bird of my country (India) but also the state bird of the north-eastern state of Orissa and in keeping with the theme of the book, the art style we used is Pattachitra .

             Traditionally this art form is practiced in Orissa , with the themes centering around the religious tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as the Dashavatara painted in painstaking detail on specially treated surfaces with vegetable dyes. The surface to be painted upon is firstly prepared by sandwiching layers of cotton cloth (usually old sarees) with an organic glue, which is followed by sun-drying and then hours of hand polishing the hardened sari layers with a smooth stone! After the surface is prepared comes the turn of the colours which are either mineral colours or derieved from processing vegetables ( a good example is their red which is obtained from boiling certain seeds). These colours are then hand mixed ( read index finger till your bone aches!), till the correct consistency is achieved! Now aren't you glad you get to use pre- mixed colours from your favorite art stores  :D (Guess the exclamations are back ! )

           The one fun fact I really want to share here is their brush, this one is actually hand crafted from a mouse hair !! Yup you read that right a mouse is caught and his fur is harvested to bunch together into a brush ! ( Hopefully the mouse is free to scamper away afterwards ) This comes in specially handy while painting in the finer details like lines of hair and minute designs as the mouse hair is quite stiff and can work out the details beautifully!

 While we did not go into as much detailing we did order some authentic Tussar silk from a Pattachitra artist all the way from Orissa and mounted that prior to painting it with silk colours! As you can see from the image the uneven texture of the silk makes for a great backdrop.

Well you just read about some unusual art materials, if you know of any more such do drop a line, I am always interested to learn more about folk art , in the next post I will let you in on some inside details about the characters in the story, stay tuned :)