Painting Workshop With Ajay Sharma

I finally have a chance to post about the wonderful enjoyable week I spent recently learning traditional Indian miniature painting techniques from Jaipur master Ajay Sharma. I picked up a lot of valuable knowledge, and drank a lot of delicious chai. Ajay is an incredibly skilled painter and a very encouraging teacher. Hopefully he will visit Sydney again next year and run another course. I can thoroughly recommend it.

Ajay showed us how to mix traditional paints using chalk powder and pigment bound with gum arabic. It's crucial and difficult to get the right proportions of chalk and gum in the mix. Ajay showed us some tricks to get it right. Too little gum arabic and the paint will powder off; too much and it will be brittle and tend to flake off.

Below: kariya (chalk and gum arabic) mixed with pigments in shells.

We also learned how to prepare traditional wasli paper for painting, how to burnish the paper, and how to apply even washes and base colours. Also various brush techniques. Finishing up by learning how to apply gold leaf.


The standard of the paintings produced, even by those students new to this art form, was truly remarkable.