After digressing from the main theme - kolam- posting a recipe for a festival and a couple of Indian floral decoration ideas - a simple method to make a garland and the traditional method of stringing flowers, I am back to some kolam designs. Meanwhile, an (accidental ) image search revealed that some of the colourful rangoli designs drawn by me show up in another website. Making a hand drawn colourful design can take any where from 30 to 60 minutes. Those who do it may be aware of the effort and pains one has to take to complete a kolam to her satisfaction. So it is very painful when your kolam shows up in another website. Not one, but many. I was seriously contemplating filing a DMCA report armed with all the proof I had. However I decided to contact the owner first and fortunately the response was positive. I request not to lift images off my blog without my permission. I also discovered that some of my kolam have been traced on paper and uploaded. Is imitation the best form of flattery? Please read the terms of use.
Now coming to the kolam . This summer holidays are a wonderful time for kids to learn a new art and kolam should be accorded importance. So another set of kolam designs for beginners and children . The videos for some of these kolam are available in my YouTube channel Rangolisansdots under the category - Basic rangoli for learning. It is a series of simple kolam.This is the first in this series. After having some videos with a star as the central pattern, this series will have floral petals as the theme. Draw the eight petals at the centre. From this draw three floral petal motifs as shown. Complete the kolam to get the design shown in the image.The second kolam is a sikku or neli kolam. For more information and images go to neli kolam.
This design has a dot pattern 7,7,5,3,1 as shown. The kolam is drawn around the dots. Start with the fourth dot at the bottom. The line connects this dot, the one at the top and the second and fourth dot in the third row. The remaining dots are used to get symmetric patterns to the left and right of the centre. In case of doubt please visit Rangolisansdots - my YouTube channel to know the method. I have decorated the finished kolam with a lotus and lamps. During my recent visit to Karnataka, I was humbled to see simple yet beautiful kolam drawn at the entrance of many homes, big and small. It also made me very happy that this tradition is continuing to flourish in many parts of our country.
Simple kolam designs can also be drawn with few dots, 4 or 5 being among the simplest dot grids. The kolam below is with a 5 by 5 dot grid. Place the dot grid, from the central dot draw four lines radiating on four sides to form the wings of the birds. Then draw the remaining portion of the birds, add the beak ( free hand ). Use up the remaining dots to get fruits that represent grapes. Quite a simple method of drawing a birds and fruits kolam with such a small dot grid.
Of the hundreds of kolam I have drawn for Rangoli-sans-dots,
You may like rangoli for beginners with dots and without dots have been hugely popular in addition to the colourful rangoli designs that I have drawn for festivals.