The Making of Dipawali Rangoli

Diwali, the festival of lights - time to enjoy with family and friends, eating specially made sweets and savouries, light diyas, burst crackers and dress up to look your dazzling best.

Apart from decorating lighting up your home with diyas or candles, why not bring in some colour as well? We are referring to rangoli, the traditional art of decorating floors with patterns using coloured powder. Although this art is Maharashtrian in origin, it has become quite popular all over the country.

If you want to create your own rangoli this diwali, we shall help you out with the basics

What you will need to create a rangoli?

The rangoli patterns are usually made with rice powder that has been coloured with dyes. You can get lovely, bright colours to make your designs with. Most shops that sell diwali related items like diyas and crackers stock rangoli powder. You can even use flower petals, cereals (the orange and yellow coloured dal), turmeric powder, to lend colour to your rangoli.

You will also need a piece of chalk to draw the outline of the rangoli design on the floor.

How to create the rangoli?

Choose a design that you want to draw. You may find designs from books and magazines or you may try to create your own design. Rangoli designs are symmetrical in nature and geometric in shape.

If you want to try out a design of your own, first draw it on a piece of paper and fill in the design with coloured sketch pens to get an idea about how the rangoli will look.

With a piece of chalk, first draw the outline of the rangoli design.

Now it's time to fill in the outline with rangoli powder, the most challenging part of the whole exercise! Pick up some powder with your thumb and index finger and fill in the design by rubbing the two fingers together and sprinkling the powder on the floor. Take care to sprinkle the powder carefully, don't let powders of two different colours merge with each other.

You may create spaces within the rangoli design to place diyas. You could also use flower petals of different colours (golden marigolds, bright red roses) to add that extra dimension to your design.

With a little bit of imagination, a dash of aesthetic sense and dollops of patience, you can create a piece of art that will add lots of colour to your diwali celebarations!

The Tradition of Rangoli               Rangoli Patterns