White Rangoli

"Janmaastami Wishes"

A simple and big round based kolam done during my stay at parents' home. I wanted to take a break from sikku kolams and so thought of drawing a freestyle kolam. The centre pin wheel design which I thought to draw like a floral petals but got changed into pinwheel design.

Drawing freehand kolam needs to dust off my brain and manipulate the neurons in a constructive way. To me, deciding the base design takes much of my time. Its a normal practice that, I stand staring at the floor for a few seconds to a few minutes, not more than 2 mins, if not my mother will deliver her usual dialogue, just draw a small kolam,"Don't strain yourself". An usual advice from all moms to their daughters.

If the base design is decided and imprinted on floor, then drawing extensions isn't an issue at all... Just I keep on extending by placing small elements here and there. Once I finish the base design, the extensions follow a theme. The theme, ranging from Paisley, minarets, checkers, floral pattern, swirls and twirls, to just lines.

In this kolam, I have taken swirls as the theme design and started drawing swirls in the next layer. As I said earlier, I don't plan for freehands unlike sikku kolams. For sikku kolams I need to open up my notebook to check the dot pattern, the loop formation and the total pattern. Some dots have a confusing dot pattern like thissikku kolam For these dot patterns I need to plot on a paper for once before I move on to the floor version. Though I don't practice for simple and many kolams having many strands in it. If it's more than 25 then I don't take the risk of getting lost in the half way while drawing, so go in for a tryout as to avoid a chaotic situation.

In this kolam, I enjoyed drawing swirls with different orientation of swirls. Some got an acquaintance, some into cluster formation, But all in harmony. Drawing an outdoor kolam indulges me that I forget myself and keep on extending the kolam till there is no space to draw.

I liked this design for the placement of the swirls, especially the fillers in between the minaret shapes. For final border, again the swirls adorned the final layer to say Au revoir to this kolam.