My First PHAD Painting

Attended a wonderful 2 – days workshop organized on ‘PHAD Painting’ by City Palace, Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation (MMCF), Udaipur. A PHAD is a cloth painting used by storytellers in Rajasthan to recount the legends of heroes and folk deities. 

The workshop was very nicely organized by Ms. Chelsea Santos, Asst. Curator, City Palace Museum, Udaipur. All participants including me underwent a detailed and interesting training which was given by Mr. Abhishek Joshi Ji (Renowned PHAD artist from Bhilwara and recipient of many awards including Limca Book of Records). Both days training was very exciting as we saw and learnt the usage & ways of applying colours, when to apply which colour, how the colours are made from natural resources like flowers, stones and fibres and where can we get the raw materials for colour making, how and when to apply borders. All explained in a very demonstrative and lucid manner. A wonderful session indeed.

Personally, I enjoyed this session to a full extent. Besides, a new learning it also came to me as an oasis in between my rigorous academic and freelance IT work which keeps me on toes for 14-16 hours/day. It was an exciting experience holding the colour brush after a span of 33 long years. Last sketching & painting I used to do was in the school summer vacations at Udaipur. 

I enjoyed creating a PHAD painting on paper which I am proud to share with all of you. The painting is on a 21 x 15-inch paper sheet and is done with poster colours. The paintings depict two kings riding elephants driven by their mahawats. Proud to receive the Certificate of Participation from MMCF and a sweet recognition on ‘Eternal Mewar’ Instagram page.

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