Revealing Strokes

The pigments used in Indian art are still as bright as ever today, although centuries have elapsed since they were painted. However, applying colour, polishing, and adding contour lines and ornaments were only the last steps in a creation process consisting of many separate stages. Different kinds of drawings (sketches, tracings, workshop copies) not only document the process through which a given work of art was made, but also tell us more about the artists than we can learn from their finished works alone.