Creating art on fabric

Artist Vijayakumar moved the bamboo pen dipped in black dye effortlessly over the off-white fabric to sketch the outlines of a dancing figure.

The dye dried out quite fast and he started out on another dancer next to the first one. No stencils, no tracing paper, but the image turned out to be an exact mirror image, thanks to his forty long years of experience creating Kalamkari designs.

Demonstration

In Kozhikode for the first time, this artist is doing a live demonstration of the making of a Kalamkari fabric at ‘Art Asia,’ an art gallery near Fathima Hospital. Kalamkari designs are hand painted using a special type of ‘Kalam’ (pen) made of bamboo shoots and hence the name.