Artventures of Madhubani: Elementary

Artventures of Madhubani: Elementary teaches children Madhubani painting through a story. Meera travels from Delhi to her hometown Madhubani for a cousin's wedding, and the first thing she sees when she steps off the train is the railway station covered in paintings. She asks her mother why people are allowed to draw on walls when she is not. Her Dadi answers the rest over the next few pages: what Madhubani means, who used to paint it, and how a 1934 earthquake in Bihar led officials to the painted houses nobody outside the region had seen.

The drawing work starts with borders. Three border sections cover flower petal designs and two sets of geometric ones. Six pattern sections follow, covering line patterns used to fill backgrounds, floral designs taken from clothing, the fish-scale pattern used to show water, betel leaf patterns and combinations of two elements.

Motifs take up the middle third. Each one is broken into four numbered steps with the facing page left blank to practise on. Two birds, a fish, a lotus, an earthen pot, the sun, a tree, a cow, an elephant, a deer, a human face, a Madhubani woman and a Madhubani man.

The last section is activity pages. Recreate a peacock with your own patterns, colour a parrot composition, add fish to a half-empty pond, decorate a bride's saree, join the dots to complete a mother and daughter, design a Madhubani T-shirt, draw a wedding scene, draw a scene from your own life, and finish by drawing your own version of Meera and Dadi.

Every motif and painting in the book comes from the work of Shrimati Dulari Devi of Ranti village, who learnt Madhubani while working as a domestic help in the household of Mahasundari Devi and received the Padma Shri in 2021. Her letter to young artists opens the book.