Lines, circles, squiggles, and triangles, Kids will love to make up their own scenes with this post-Easy Indian Warli Art for Kids – with step by step pictures

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Step by Step Easy Indian Warli Art for Kids

What is Warli Art?

Warli painting is a form of tribal art mostly created by the tribal people from the North Sahyadri Range in Maharashtra, India.

What are the main features of Warli painting?

– Warli Paintings are rudimentary wall paintings that use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle, and a square. – The paintings are monosyllabic.

Warli Art form is the easiest for little kids to start learning about India’s Folk art. Every kid can easily relate to the simple geometrical figures that a Warli drawing is comprised of. It’s also a great way to teach them about common shapes – lines, dots, triangles & circles.

How is Warli painting done?

The Warli paintings are done on mud walls with white paste. This white paste is a mixture of rice paste and water with gum as a binding. They use a bamboo stick chewed at the end to make it as supple as a paintbrush.

The easiest way to introduce this art I thought would be to show Lil P some books. I chanced upon this lovely book by Tulika

Introduce Warli Art for Kids with a book – Dancing on walls

[by Shamin Padamsee, illustrations Uma Krishnaswamy ]

Teaching Warli painting - Step by step images Warli Art form is the easist for little kids to start learning about India's Folk art . Every kid can easily relate to the simple geometrical figures that a Warli drawing is comprised of. It's also a great way to teach them about common shapes - lines, dots, triangles & circles.

With its vibrant colors and simple Warli art, it caught Lil p’s attention. Which little girl wouldn’t be mesmerized by the story of a girl who finds mystical moon characters that create magic?

At the end of the story, I asked Lil P if she wanted to paint the silver beings like Shivri ( the Lil girl from the book) and I heard a big YES.

mamma let’s paint walri* … and so we did.

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Characteristics of Warli Art for Kids – The Basic Figure

Warli art is composed of simplified and elementary graphic constructs. They use basic geometric shapes for depicting usual symbols of life and the world around them. Humans in Warli art would be represented by ‘stick’ figures or triangles reflecting the basic anatomy.

Start off with a simple X, then join the edges and add the neck, head, and finally hands and legs. You can leave it as is or color it in. Both look equally good. Once you master the basic image, you can repeat the same to create more intricate Warli patterns.

We had a lot of fun making funny stick figures. Some had long hair, some wore a hat.. Some were dancing, some watching. Mumma why are boys wearing a skirt?? I think in walri everyone is happy so they are all wearing a dancing dress. We drew a cat.. haha. Mumma this looks like a walri tiger .. he is so big.

Have a look at my nearly 4-year old’s Warli artwork 🙂

The only problem was that once she had her figures ready, she wanted them to magically get her lots n lots of gifts just like in the book. Now that’s a story for another day. See Ya!

*Walri – Warli the way lil p says it.

The Lovely Neeta Nadkarni shares some more fun step-by-step ideas on her Facebook Page.