Indian traditions: Warli art

I love art projects, so choosing to teach the girl's about the Warli tribe and their traditional art wasn't even a question during our Indian term.

The Warli people are from the state of Maharashtra, mostly located on the northern outskirts of Mumbai. Rather than depicting deities, their art tells a story of moments in everyday life such as hunting, dancing and harvesting. Warli art was traditionally painted on the inside walls of mud huts, usually for a celebration such as a marriage.

Have a look at this Indian Warli Art website for more information.


Our meeting began as you may have guessed, with a discussion and photo slideshow. Why mess with something that is working well? It gives me a chance to share information with the girls and they love to see the real-life examples on the computer screen. It has worked wonders for imparting the "learning material" this term!

Here is some Warli art painted on the wall at Sangam's entrance.

After looking at examples of and discussing Warli art, we moved onto the practical portion of the meeting. 

I demonstrated to the girl's how to draw different people and objects in the Warli style. We began with the basic person standing and then worked our way through a variety of poses - walking, running and sitting to name a few.

My photo, not my drawings.

As I drew on the whiteboard, the Brownie's followed along, drawing on pieces of paper. Other objects we drew included: 

• trees
• sun, moon, clouds, stars
• campfire
• line of people dancing
• musical instruments

Some Brownie drawings. It's merely a coincidence that I only took photos of drawings that used blue texta. The was a rainbow of colour used, I just didn't capture it.

Once everybody had learnt the basics, it was time to move onto the painting. Each girl had a 12x12 inch piece of calico on which to paint. I had purchased thin-tipped paint brushes to make painting the fine details easier.

While traditionally, the Warli tribe used white for their painting, calico was the easiest and cheapest material for us to paint on and so we painted with black paint. If I had more time at my disposal, I would have liked to paint the calico beforehand to imitate the red ochre walls of the Warli mud huts.

I asked the girl's to plan their paintings before touching the paint and to think about the story that they wanted to tell.

Here are some of the final designs:

This was a meeting where we could have easily kept going for another hour. The Brownies were completely enthralled the entire time, and I think they really enjoyed the simple tricks used to easily recreate the Warli designs. An A+ meeting!