Before the Line
Before the first mark was made on the wall, the painter had already done most of the work.
Not the physical work — not the grinding of pigments, not the layering of lime plaster, though those were extensive. The inner work. The ritual preparation that determined whether the line, once drawn, would carry life or remain inert.
The Ritual Before the Act of Painting
After deciding on the figures to be drawn, an auspicious day was chosen for commencement. Prior to beginning, blessings of god and guru were sought. Sometimes puja was performed on the brushes themselves. The artist would meditate, recite the dhyana sloka of the deity they were about to draw, bring the deity to mind completely, and only then begin — facing east.
This was not ceremony for its own sake. It was theological preparation for an act understood as invocation. The painter was not about to make a representation of a deity. They were about to make a site for a deity’s presence. The quality of their inner state determined the quality of that presence.
The art was taught under the gurukula system for centuries. A main instructor or guru would instruct the student on preparing pigments, learning the dhyana slokas, and understanding the composition rules. After learning the basics, the student accompanied the guru on various commissions — learning not just technique but the devotional practice within which technique was embedded. Students practiced drawing plants, animals, humans, and figures by drawing and redrawing on floors and wooden planks using stones, charcoal, or plant stems until the patterns became imprinted in the mind.
Preparing the Wall
The wall itself required elaborate preparation before a mark could be made.
First, lime plaster was applied to create a rough primary surface — between 0.4 and 54.1mm thick. Over this, a secondary, smoother layer of lime was applied, between 0.3 and 20.9mm thick. To prevent the lime plaster from peeling off from the laterite walls, natural adhesives were used — neem tree extract, kallippal, vilampasha, jaggery.
The primary layer required at least two weeks of preparation. Sand and lime were finely sieved, ground, mixed with water, and kept aside. After two weeks, gum extracted from uzhinjalvalli or poolamaram was incorporated. A third, final layer was prepared from finely sieved lime mixed with jaggery solution and water. Over this, multiple layers of a solution of slaked lime, tender coconut water, and cow milk were applied to create the final smooth drawing surface.
The wall, in other words, was itself a prepared substance — not a neutral support but a carefully made surface, built from natural materials, designed to receive paint in a specific way.
Preparing the Pigments
Only five colours were used in ancient Kerala murals: yellow, red, green, white, and black. The murals have survived over centuries partly because the painters used pigments that did not react with the lime plaster. Every pigment was sourced from the natural world.
Different kinds of laterite stones were sources of saffron yellow and saffron red — washed in pure water and ground slowly on an arakallu into a fine paste, transferred to a vessel, mixed with water, left to settle, filtered of sediment, the process repeated as often as needed to obtain a pure, transparent pigment, then poured onto a clay vessel and dried in shade.
Green was prepared either by mixing neelam with iravikkara — Garcinia morella — or blue pigment with manayola, orpiment. Some painters used malachite, a copper ore. White came from shankha — powdered conch shell. Black came from oil soot — lamp soot, collected from the very lamps burning in the temples where the painters worked.
The pigments were prepared in wooden utensils and transferred to empty coconut shells while drawing.
The Composition Sequence
The composition itself followed a precise sequence.
First, kittalekhani — a chalk-like instrument prepared from old bricks or mud nests of a wasp mixed with dried cow dung — was used to draw the initial lines. These lines were then traced by madhyamalekhani dipped in yellow paint. The lines were made sharper and corrected using red pigment. Nutgrass brushes filled in the areas; for broader areas, a kaithaveru brush was used.
The filling of areas followed a specific order: ornaments first, then body, then clothes, then background. The same shade was applied multiple times — the colours were absorbed by the wall rapidly, making them dim, so multiple applications were needed to achieve depth. This process of multiple shading was called varthana. There were three types: pathrakam, where lines resembling leaf veins were applied; rekhikam, where narrow lines in the same direction were drawn; and bindujavarthana, where dots were used for shading — considered the most suitable for walls.
The Final Act
The composition ends with the black outline — mashiyezhuthuka — the last act, not the first. This is the reversal of how most painting traditions operate. In Kerala mural painting, the colours and forms were built up in layers, and only when everything was complete did the painter draw the defining line that closed each figure.
And then, before the work was truly finished, came the unmeelanam ceremony — the filling of the pupils of the most important figures in the mural. It was believed that after this process, the image came alive.
The ceremony was performed before a lighted lamp, sometimes after camphor worship, on an auspicious occasion. In temples, it was accompanied by prayers and the sounds of conch shells. The patron would hand the brush to the artist, requesting them to carry out the unmeelanam. The artist, having prepared the wall, prepared the pigments, meditated on the deity, drawn the form in its entirety — now drew the eyes.
And the god looked back.
