Paisley Kolam - 6

A Paisley kolam done in plain white rangoli powder. Paisley commonly known as Mango, Peacock design have an unique place in the fabric printing. Earlier I had sarees with Paisleys on the border especially on the Mysore and Kanchipuram silk sarees. In 90's I had a craze for Pochampally silk sarees and had a decent collection and some had paisleys outlining the saree, which I loved a lot. Hopefully, the paisleys in my collections were the element which attracted me a lot.. Got deviated from the topic. Paisleys. I guess Paisley is the most popular design for fabric printing. I had a set of causal wears which had only with Paisleys as the deisgn, especially on cotton fabrics.

I haven't seen my Paisleys in my mother's kolams. Her kolams had some designs repeated in all her freestyle kolams. Swirls, twirls, flowers, leaves, frills, geometrical shapes. No special characters, only the basic pattern. Her dotted kolams were transformed into freehand by addition of elements which almost looked like a freestyle kolam. Now seldom she draws, even if she draws, its either a solitary star or a fower adoring the entrance.. She has lost her strokes and its shaky. I have drawn a Paisley kolam, of course, without any preplans done. To me the toughest part and most time taken is on deciding the base design. I do take a pause before starting a freehand kolam. As I said earlier, the first line or circle takes the lead to the whole design. Here I started with cross lines and drew a curvy line on it which took a shape of a Paisley, so I viewed a Paisley and moved on to the next layer. For the next layer drew a bigger Paisley to secure the inner one, small in size. Then filled the space in between with tear drop shapes and drew a twirl from the bottom paisley on all sides. From the ending point again drew Paisleys for the final layer. After drawing the last layer of Paisleys, their tummy looked too huge and I added three lines to make it look slimmer. With feathers on its back, Paisleys looked adorable. To give a complete look, I added dots and spikes.