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.

Outline Drawing

Today being Ganesha Chaturthi, an auspicious day in the Hindu calendar for Shri Ganesha, I decided to start a miniature painting of Shri Ganapati seated on a lotus under an umbrella. 

I began with a light pencil sketch then made an outline drawing over the top with a very fine brush (3/0 size) and Winsor & Newton Indian Red watercolour (this is brownish red). I varied the weight of the brushwork lines to give the outline more energy and calligraphic quality.

Finally I used a soft eraser to remove the pencil. 

I used a slightly more diluted tone for the clouds in the background, as these will be softer and vaguer than the foreground subject in the final painting.

The paper is smooth 300 GSM Arches watercolour paper, and the size of the drawing is about 150 x 150 mm. It is thick enough not to buckle too much from the moisture of the paint.
Indian miniatures usually have a border (often very ornate). Select a border that supports the image and doesn't compete with it. I've gone for a simple line border. The border lines can be ruled, but I often do them freehand in order to match the lines in the image.

The outline drawing seems quite dark but It's surprising how much of this can disappear during the process of colouring. If the base drawing is too heavy it will dominate the painting, but if it is too vague then you will be less confident in completing the next stage.

Next step is to block in the main colour areas, using a bigger brush of course, without fussing with detail.  I try to leave a bit of the outline showing. 

I can sometimes be indecisive about which colours to chose, so I try to start with the most important elements of the subject and the colours that are fairly obvious choices fixed by nature, eg pink for the lotus. In iconographical paintings of deities, the colour choices are relatively fixed by tradition, eg blue skin for Shri Krishna, dhotis (pants) tend to be yellow or white, however variations are possible. 

When the main things seem to be the right colour then the secondary elements, such as clothes, and background landscape can be done in colours that support and set off the main colours. The sky need not be blue, but could be red (suggesting dawn or sunset), or gold or even indigo (night, monsoon clouds). So chose a sky colour that sets off the other elements. I will probably chose a shade of light blue for the sky because this will set off the coral colour of Shri Ganesha's skin which is more fixed by tradition (although He is sometimes depicted with grey, white, pink, orange or bright red skin. The rat could be tawny, grey, white or even black, whatever suits the rest of the painting. Water in Indian miniatures is usually a soft bluish grey, but it could be golden (reflecting the sun), again, whatever suits the main subject.

If you are unsure of what colours to chose, take a few photocopies of the outline drawing (or make some little thumbnail sketches) and experiment with various colour schemes on the copies. This can be done roughly and quickly.
Looking at miniatures from the history of Indian painting is a good way of seeing which colour combinations have worked in the past. Usually a limited palette looks better than a painting with too many different colours, but there is no rule.

It is said in India that a painting should have some grey area in it, a neutral shade to set off the bright colours.

If you have children, feel free to print a copy of my outline drawing for them to colour in.

Gold

The gold embellishment on the couple's clothing and jewellery has come up well in this photograph. Gold can be applied in the form of gold leaf adhered with gilding size (glue), or painted on in liquid form (gold dust mixed with gum arabic).

Drawing

The initial stage of an Indian miniature painting is the drawing. In the past, charcoal was used to outline the image and this was then traced over in somewhat feint watercolour, usually of a reddish-brown colour, using a fine brush. The neutral reddish-brown tint is suitable for most objects, and particularly good for outlining skin tones in figures. These days, a graphite ('lead') pencil is often easier to use than charcoal. A medium hardness 2B pencil, which is soft enough not to engrave the paper, but hard enough to keep a sharp point. For very fine drawing, a harder pencil may be required. While doing the brush drawing (tracing over the pencil lines with watercolour), corrections can be made to the pencil drawing if necessary. After the watercolour outline has dried, a soft eraser can be used to gently remove traces of pencil marks that are still visible. Drawing as lightly as possible with the pencil makes erasure easier. Graphite has a slight disadvantage over charcoal in that it is less absorbent and does not take the brush drawing as well as charcoal. If the graphite line is too thick, the watercolour tends to bead on top of it.

During the next stage - blocking in colour within the outlines - corrections may be made if parts of the outline seem too heavy and thick, by slightly overlapping the outline with the body colour.

Finally, sometimes a third layer of outline, in a more saturated colour, is needed to sharpen up the image. Care should be taken not to be heavy-handed or the delicate life of the image may be destroyed - a very fine brush is used. 

Varying the weight or thickness of lines, and even breaking them slightly here and there, adds energy to the outlines and allows the images to 'breathe'. Though miniature painting is a very precise artform, the calligraphic expression of the drawing should still be evident in the final painting to a certain extent.
The fine Mughal-style brush drawing above, from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, is probably a study rather than an outline for a painting, as the paper does not appear to have been prepared for a coloured miniature.

Materials and Technique

To reproduce the style of traditional Indian and Persian miniatures, I use gouache paints, sometimes with the addition of watercolour paints. Gouache is similar to watercolour but much more opaque. It dries quickly and has a matte finish. The brilliance and matte finish of gouache makes it suitable for Indian miniature painting.

I use the best quality gouache paints possible on thick, acid-free watercolour paper with a smooth surface. The Winsor and Newton gouache range is good. Their website has tips on gouache technique. Here's a link: www.winsornewton.com

Some artists report that M. Graham and Schminke artist’s gouache are the very best to paint with, and are not too much more expensive than W&N. You might have to mail order these brands. I have yet to try these, but probably will soon, and I'll try to review them in a post.

Gouache paints vary in opacity and drying time. I have had problems with certain white cheap gouache paints remaining sticky for a long period. Because most gouache colours dry very quickly, you can get caught off guard and ruin a painting by transferring the tacky paint on your hand.

Gouache and watercolour are thinned with water, which tends to cause the paper support to buckle. Painting in fine detail on a bumpy surface is not ideal so I generally stretch the watercolour paper by wetting it and taping or pinning it to a board. As the paper dries, it becomes taut, and buckling is greatly reduced. The thicker the paper, the less this is a problem. Historically, paper for miniatures was sealed, presumably with some kind of gum arabic mixed with white, and this would have prevented water from the paints distorting the paper. Buckled paintings can be flattened under heavy books, once they have dried, although a severely buckled piece of paper can get creased in an attempt to flatten out the bumps. If a totally stable surface is desired, a stiff support such as illustration board is an option.