Rangoli- Day-2

DAY 2

To begin with…

Give the following instructions to the participants

· Choose a design that you want to draw. You may find designs from books and magazines or you may try to create your own design. Rangoli designs are symmetrical in nature and geometric in shape. If you want to try out a design of your own, first draw it on a piece of paper and fill in the design with coloured sketch pens to get an idea about how the rangoli will look.

· Wipe the floor (where you want to create the rangoli) with a wet cloth and wait for the area to dry.

· With a piece of chalk, first draw the outline of the rangoli design.

· Now it's time to fill in the outline with rangoli powder, the most challenging part of the whole exercise. Pick up some powder with your thumb and index finger and fill in the design by rubbing the two fingers together and sprinkling the powder on the floor. Take care to sprinkle the powder carefully; don't let powders of two different colours merge with each other.

· Start from the centre and move outwards.

· You can use traditional colours like flour of rice and dal. But easily available colours like gulal, kumkum or even poster colours can be used.

· You may create spaces within the rangoli design to place diyas. You could also use flower petals of different colours (golden marigolds, bright red roses) to add that extra dimension to your design.
With a little bit of imagination, a dash of aesthetic sense and dollops of patience, you can create a piece of art

· Make a stencil and use it to make harmonious patterns.

Options for Coloring:

· Gulal, Kumkum, Haldi powder, Mehndi powder

· Petals of different flowers and leaves

· Pastel crayons and poster colours

· Rice paste

· Colored sawdust, small thin pieces of stones (Saw dust can be coloured with the help of dyes and should be done a night before)

· Grains, pulses, cereals

· Colored rice is another choice*

*To food color rice, Add a healthy amount of food coloring to two 1 tsp of rubbing alcohol in a Ziploc bag. Pour in about 3/4 cup of UNCOOKED rice. Close the bag and shake well. Pour onto a piece of wax paper or tinfoil to dry (Making the colored rice is messy and food color doesn't come out of clothes therefore the shaking part should be done carefully. · Let dry (about 1/2 a day -- less if you spread them out well in a warm airy place.) (Food coloring Paste can also be used instead of drops.)

Tell the participants that we will begin with simple patterns with the help of 4X4 ; 5X5 points. Tell them to fill the pattern using coloured sawdust.