Style combination · Contrasts

Kalighat Pat × Warli Painting

Both are Indian painting traditions taken up by a market; Kalighat isolates one brushed, coloured figure on a pale ground, Warli spreads many white pictogram figures over a dark one, so choose between a single satirical figure and a communal crowd.

From the research on Warli Painting

Mix them and make something Kalighat Pat Warli Painting

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Warli Painting, their arrangement from Kalighat Pat, the finish from Kalighat Pat. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Warli Painting

Type from Kalighat Pat
Colour from Warli Painting: Monochrome
Earth & mineral
Form from Warli Painting: Geometric primitives
Stylised figuration
Composition from Kalighat Pat: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Kalighat Pat: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Kalighat Pat

Fiesta

Rozha One, standing in for Bengali captions cut into Battala woodblocks

Text · Warli Painting

The ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others. White rice paste (on paper and cloth often white poster colour or watercolour), drawn with a chewed bamboo twig on a red-earth and cow-dung ground, builds every form from circle, triangle and square: a person is two triangles joined at the tip. Rows of farmers, fishers and dancers fill the field around a sacred square (chauk) or wheel in the spiral of the tarpa dance, flat and without perspective.

Archivo; Warli Painting used No script inside the scene and Monoline Devanagari (Marathi) or Gujarati hand-lettering drawn in the same white stroke, kept small and outside the scene, when text must accompany Warli-derived graphics

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Warli Painting, with a counter-accent from Kalighat Pat. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Warli Painting

#4a2f20 ground · 36%
#f3ede0 ink · 14%
#b5643a accent · 18%
#e0a92e accent · 14%
#8e3b25 accent · 10%
#3f6b8f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #4a2f20;
  --ink: #f3ede0;
  --accent-1: #b5643a;
  --accent-2: #e0a92e;
  --accent-3: #8e3b25;
  --accent-4: #3f6b8f;
  --font-display: "Rozha One", serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints: Many sheets depict Hindu deities that are still worshipped (Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Krishna), and some were painted for Muslim patrons (Duldul, Imam Husain's horse), so do not distort, crop or place these figures in mocking or disposable contexts. The patua (chitrakar) families of Bengal still practise the art; commission or credit living painters rather than tracing museum images, and name the artist where known.

Warli Painting: Warli painting is the living art of an Adivasi community, and its wall form is ritual: married women (suvasini) painted the chauk with the mother goddess Palaghata for weddings and harvests, and at some weddings still draw its first lines before men painters finish it, while women priests who officiate at weddings (Dhavleri, described as widows in Scroll's 2022 account of the Warli women's revival) sing. Do not use the chauk or Palaghata as decoration, and do not call the art 'primitive' or prehistoric. Its easy-to-copy figures are widely reproduced on products and campaigns, often without credit or payment to Warli painters; 'Warli Painting' is a Geographical Indication registered by the Adivasi Yuva Seva Sangh, but it does not stop Warli-style graphics made elsewhere. Commission, license from or credit named Warli artists, do not sell Warli-style goods as Warli handicraft, and never present a generated image as a Warli painting. Since the 1970s the paid form has been painted mostly by men, who now paint many wedding chauks too; credit the women whose ritual practice it comes from, and the Warli women reclaiming it, such as the Dhavleri group in Palghar district (Kirti Vartha, Suchita Kamadi and others), who paint wedding chauks and murals.

The two styles

1830–1930 · South Asia Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints The bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs. A single plaque-like figure stands on unpainted paper, drawn with one loaded, sweeping brushstroke that both outlines and shades it. Deities share the repertoire with satire of the Westernised babu, domestic scandal and street life.

Cream-coloured folk-style figures on a textured terracotta background form a large circle of linked dancers around musicians beneath the word “TOGETHER.” Surrounding scenes show people cooking, farming, carrying baskets and fishing, among trees, animals, huts, a sun, a crescent moon and stars.

1970–present · South Asia Warli Painting The ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others. White rice paste (on paper and cloth often white poster colour or watercolour), drawn with a chewed bamboo twig on a red-earth and cow-dung ground, builds every form from circle, triangle and square: a person is two triangles joined at the tip. Rows of farmers, fishers and dancers fill the field around a sacred square (chauk) or wheel in the spiral of the tarpa dance, flat and without perspective.