Madhubani Paintings

 Madhubani Paintings

 Evolution of Madhubani Paintings

 The history of Madhubani Paintings dates back to the time of Ramayana when   king Janaka asked an artist to capture the wedding of his daughter Sita with   prince Rama. He commissioned craftsmen to decorate the entire kingdom with   Madhubani art on the auspicious occasion of his daughter’s marriage. That’s   one of the earliest mentions of Madhubani paintings that can be found in   ancient scriptures and text. Now this Art is defined as a style of Indian paintings, created by the women of various communities  originated from madhubani district of the Mithila region of Bihar. This painting is done with a variety of tools, including fingers, twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks and using natural dyes and pigments. It is characterised by its eye-catching geometrical patterns. There is ritual content for particular occasions, such as birth or marriage, and festivals, such as Holi, Surya Shasti, Kali puja, Upanayana, and Durga Puja.

This painting as a form of wall art was practiced widely throughout the region the more recent development of painting on paper and canvas mainly originated among the villages around Madhubani, and latter developments that led to the term "Madhubani art" being used alongside "Mithila Painting."

The themes of Madhubani paintings usually include natural elements like fish, birds, animals, turtle, sun, moon, bamboo trees and flowers, like a lotus. Love, valour, devotion, fertility, and prosperity are often symbolized by geometric patterns, which is another important feature of this art form

Madhubani Special 

Madhubani paintings are done using fingers and twigs as well as matchsticks and pen nibs in the modern day. Usually, bright colours are used in these paintings with an outline made from rice paste as its framework. If there’s a border, it is embellished with geometric and floral patterns. Natural dyes are used for the paintings. For example, charcoal and soot for black, turmeric extract for yellow, red from sandalwood, blue from indigo and so on.

Art form:

Madhubani art is created without the use of sketches, they are made instinctively by the artists. This feature not only makes Madhubani paintings unique but also incredibly exclusive.

This folk art is not just mere decorations on the wall, it is also used for worship. Artists in Bihar draw paintings depicting Hindu deities on trees and those who hold strong religious beliefs, prevent others from chopping those trees down. This plays a big role in preventing trees from being cut down.

Meaning of symbols:

This Painting depicts elephants and fishes where elephant symbolizes power and fish symbolizes good luck and holiness. Even though this art is centuries old, it has preserved its original style and content in its native land of Mithila.

The Madhubani paintings are often drawn according to a fixed theme and accordingly lines, patterns and symbols are drawn by the Madhubani artists. For example, the fish symbol is often used to represent fertility, procreation and good luck while peacocks are often used to symbolize religion, love and romance and serpents stand are often used to represent divine protectors.

Fun Learning – Create your own themed Madhubani Art paintings

It’s always fun in exploring new things, why not to try our own ideas in the art of Madhubani painting, you can follow the below simple and clean steps to make your own art of Madhubani painting. Before going to the step here I prefer to explain you by drawing the “Radha Krishna” Art which is considered the most chosen art in Madhubani – Let’s go to the steps directly from now on.

• Make a border – choice of border can be any of your way you can either go for single, double, or triple even more the way you prefer. Ideally it depends on the choice of one’s own taste.
• Start making a sketch of your main object.
• What’s else can be next – yes adding more details to your main object – this is also user perspective everybody has their own ideas and creativity.
• Now it’s time to fill up the empty spaces – it’s completely Artist’s perspective to leave how much empty space you want to leave.
• Finally, its Colour Time! – Choose the way you want the art to stand vivid and great as I said exploring is always fun go ahead and play with your choice of colours

 Today Madhubani

Today, Madhubani art piques interest in art lovers from different countries like USA, Australia, UK and Russia. Patterns from this art form have also found their way onto various items like bags, cushion covers, coasters, mugs, crockery and mouse pads. The Madhubani paintings have also become very popular in Japan and it is also well appreciated and renowned in several other countries also.

Since the creation of this unique form of art, the Madhubani painting have been used to decorate walls of houses, In the modern world, the Madhubani art has also been used to design textile products like sarees, dupattas and salwar suits.

Caring and Maintance:

Dust your artworks regularly. 

Never use chemical cleaning products or water to clean your artworks.

You should periodically check your artworks for signs of damp. These signs – discolouration and distinctive brown marks (sometimes called foxing) – are most likely to appear on the back of artworks initially. It’s a good idea to remove pieces from the wall a couple of times a year to check everything is still shipshape.

Conclusion:

The Madhubani painting tradition played a key role in the conservation efforts, where there was frequent deforestation in the state of Bihar. The main reason behind this was that the trees were traditionally adorned with forms of gods and other religious and spiritual images such as Radha-Krishna, Rama-Sita, scenes from Ramayana and Mahabharata and other mythologies.

Now a days these madhubani painting are done on sarees, Madhubani paintings also plays a major in India