Kolam by Sudha Balaji

 The first image shows basic  and simple freehand  kolam from common star rangoli Tradition has it that the  star shaped design is drawn with two lines.  Petals are drawn along the edges of the star pattern.   The gaps between are filled with floral petals and the rangoli is filled  colours to get the design shown below.    A simple but attractive rangoli.  Can be drawn in double quick time. The lotus is widely used in freehand rangolis.  No wonder I have also used them in Rangoli-sans-dots  a t the centre of a rangoli or on the periphery.  The lotus has been a religious symbol in India, and one can find them in religious places like temples.    The lotus in particular has been associated with many Gods and Puranic tales. Some freehand designs have been added between the petals.   Complete the rangoli with bright colours. The motifs chosen should match the floral design at the centre.   This ...

  Rangoli sans dots as the name suggests is all about rangoli without dots.  Some of the designs created by me few years back are shared here.   Free hand designs test our imagination. While white kolam can be drawn for daily purpose rangoli, we can draw the colourful ones for festivals like New Year . If you are looking for simple rangoli designs without colours for beginners that are new too these rangolis  may be the ones you are looking for.  Obviously most. kolam drawn by me are new particularly without chukki type  because they are all created by me. Some of them spontaneously others are recorded in many notebooks.  " Every time you come up with something new and different "  This is sample feedback from one of my social media accounts.  The reason is I spend my afternoons practising, creating. Addition of colours have been shown in the images below.  The background has not been filled.  If time permits choose a suitable...

 We need very small white rangoli designs for our daily vasal kolam .  I would like to reiterate that time and space are constraints at present.   However, to follow to tradition of decorating the entrance with small and simple kolam we need some ideas. Rangoli tips - Symmetry is very important for the beauty of rangoli but when we draw with rangoli powder with our fingers  it is possible that there may be imperfections here and there.  We should concentrate on the overall symmetry and should not compare individual elements. For example, in the muggulu designs shared above there may be slight differences in the lengths of the arms, sizes of the patterns.  That is our limitation and constraints we humans have. These designs can be used as small without chukki rangoli can be used as base to expand further, whenever possible. Spirals should be drawn without any joints.  For this draw them with confidence at one stretch.  The close-up image of t...

 These are basic designs that can be drawn at the entrance for our vasal kolangal hence images showing intermediate steps are not shown  Seven  rangoli ideas are shown here that can be used for 7 days  in 30 days i.e simple kolam for a month. One of the most common kolam in the pic below.  The basic star pattern with petals from all edges.  The 2 lines are drawn separately. How to learn kolam   We can learn this art by referring to books or websites like Rangolisansdots.  Drawing on a note book is easier than drawing with kola podi.  Kolam making the traditional way demands coordination among the fingers and thumb.  Filling the inner spaces with patterns of our choice and also on the outside as demonstrated in the images below The pics show one of the methods of creating a beautiful kolam even with a small design.  1) Small rangoli kolam easy  2) small star kolam   If you would like to try double lines simultaneously...

  Quite a few viewers on social media ( Facebook, Blogger ) ask me why I have used the name "Rangolisansdots ".  Sans means without in French,  I am told.  I started with rangoli without dots.   A white design that can be used for daily purpose I am on social media sharing rangoli designs for eleven years now.  Obviously there are several requests for designs with dots too. So I am sharing both types.  However the name stuck.  It is not possible to change the name .  It leads to several problems with search engines.   They frown upon changing name.   T he freedom with free hand rangoli is that we can decide the size depending upon the space , time and imagination at our disposal. Same rangoli with colours for Diwali festival ( also known as Deepavali in southern part of India ).  Adding colours to the plain white design can result in creating the most beautiful rangoli designs ( in the world !) Most of the design...

Very very small rangoli for daily purpose The images below show some ideas of creating easy and simple designs using spiral patterns for our daily purpose rangolis we draw at the entrance  In continuation to  a post on easy rangoli for beginners that has images of simple rangoli without dots, this post also has  easy rangoli (without dots) or kolam with dots for starters or learners.  It may include free hand rangoli designs involving  two or more steps and some may not be as simple. Some of the designs are based on central designs of rangolis shared in previous posts.     This  is a collection of small rangoli designs or small muggulu designs with images showing steps. Though rangoli can be practised with pencil, sketch pen chalk piece etc traditional rangoli is a class by itself.    Lines with rangoli powder can be drawn as straight and parallel as is possible practically.  However the rangoli when  completed gives a v...