Traditional Tamil New Year kolam designs

A step by step guide for drawing a traditional kolam designs through pictures

While we can have free hand designs or designs with dots for festival decoration of our homes and
 there are many in Rangolisansdots belonging to those categories ,

this post will delve upon only the old kolam designs that are popular and beautiful in their own way.   
They can actually be challenging too , occasionally.  

 It is still early days in Rangolisansdots and so dots rangoli designs can wait , 
we can have exclusive posts based on number of dots , themes like birds , flowers and so on.

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Without chukki New year rangoli in progress , steps through images 

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Old type kolangal are beautiful in their own way 

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The step by step procedure through the images above should make it simple.  Instead of a square base , we start with a hexagon so it may not be a classical padi kolam if we strictly go by definitions.

After drawing a hexagon draw lines to make four lines on each side of the hexagon.  The next step is to connect any two sides of the hexagon, i.e all the four lines to the next set of four lines in the next side with obviously four lines .  Repeat this step on all six sides.  Now the rest is easy, after probably what may be a difficult part in an other wise simple kolam design.  Draw four curved lines in the gaps between any two sets of lines to get the next layer .

 It appears as if the lines are locked with one another .  Now we can draw one more set of curved patterns in the gaps.  The remaining gaps are filled lotus patterns so that they align with the corners of the hexagon.  Apply a kaavi border for the kolam and it is ready for festival decoration for Tamil New Year.  Such traditional rangoli designs can also be drawn for Navratri, Varalakshmi Pooja

Step by step lines kolam rangoli through images

This kolam can be drawn free hand too , to make it easy for drawing and practising I have placed a dot grid that is something like a basic star grid with 1,4,3,4,1 dots.

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The patterns are drawn using this dot grid at the centre

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Draw sets of lines inside the contours matching the outer pattern

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It is good practice to fill the central gap with pattern matching the outside design.  This gives a good appearance for the kolam Now the next layer of lines designs

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The other designs and decorations are as per our imagination.  However , another set of rhombus designs will match with the centre.

Finally one more layer of lines , after all it is a lines kolam design , so we should favour line patterns rather heavily

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The kolam is complete and ready for festival decoration .
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To make it different and unique we can fill some colourful lines in the gaps or we can draw the entire kolam with colourful lines or we can use only brown or kaavi colour inside the kolam as also outside.  Line rangoli designs are called geethala muggulu in Telugu.

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Small rangoli with dots

9 dots or pulli kolangal