How to do sari ( Saree ) painting or saree mural painting?

One of my friends from South India invited me to her house for a dinner party. She had a huge collection of saris; still, she was saying she has no special sari to wear to the cousin's wedding ;) I agree with her as this wedding was important for her.

She took me to the shopping mall to help her in choosing the best and unique Sari. After few hours of search, we couldn’t find the new sari to buy, so we came back home. I looked back her collections once again and noticed there is a plain white sari available but that was kept just at the bottom of a bunch of saris in the wardrobe. When I took that white sari, I was in love with it and being an artist, I thought, this is the best sari in her collection and here the deal happens! “Within 15 days, either I will make over the simple to a masterpiece, else will give her the brand new sari as a gift from me”. I accept the deal. You must be thinking, what’s a great deal for any artist? It’s a journey of creativity to enhance the customer satisfaction.

I took that Sari to my home and started thinking what can be the best creativity for my friend to get convinces her. It was 6 yards long and plain off-white with decent golden border. In Kerala, all the traditions are important followed as part of their life. Before I really jumped into makeover of Sari, I did research on

Cost effectiveness
Durability
Easy to use for painting
Easily available in market
Quick dry while painting
Washable

Let’s see the step by step followed for a makeover to masterpiece sari.

1. The texture on the Sari which I chose for painting was difficult to paint as it was the transparent cloth where paint easily gets penetrates on the other side of the sari. So newspaper was used as the best solution to avoid the paint to not to spill over on another side.

2. Main criteria to select the medium was

· Cost effectiveness.

· Durability

· Easy to use for painting

· Easily available in market

· Quick dry while painting

· Washable

While keeping in mind, these essential criteria, I chose “water-based acrylic colors”.

3. I had a great understanding of my friend’s choice, what it suits her and then I gave a traditional theme to her as Lord Vishnu’s avatar Lord Krishna. Generally, Pallu is the most attractive part of sari. So to do this, I have decided to create the painting of Lord Krishna on Pallu.

4. The peacock feather is one of the favorites of Lord Krishna. This led me to choose peacock blue, green & dark blue as relevant color scheme.

5. The motif is a single design element to create a replica of it at several places. Motif shall be simple but good looking with fewer efforts. We need to be sure all motifs on the border should be exactly same, just like twins. I chose peacock feathers motif for the border of the sari.

I used a stencil to make an outline of the motif. This helped me to maintain the similarity and of course it’s a time-saving idea. We can unfold the part of sari which we need to paint. The acrylic colors have quick dry characteristic. In the case of constraint in space on the floor for sari painting, we can fold the painted part after 15-20 minutes.

As I mentioned earlier, Pallu should be most attractive part of sari, I chose a detailed painting of Lord Krishna on Pallu of the sari. Even though the area of Pallu is much smaller than border of sari, but require almost same time because of much detailing work.

Here is the masterpiece.