Kolam by Sudha Balaji

Kolam can also be drawn with mandala as a theme (one of the meanings is round or circle -  rangoli is commonly referred to as mandala in some countries).   Drawing a circle (or a near circular shape) without using a piece of chalk tied to a thread comes with practice.   As I often say, in rangoli practice may not make us perfect but can reduce the number of mistakes.  Margazhi kolam drawn during the month of Margazhi including Pongal kolam (aka Sankranti muggulu ) is the great time  when we see big and bright and different types of designs. It is easy to draw a free hand mandala or rangoli if we draw a baisc floral petal pattern as the centre. Invariably in rangoli the length of the petals are almost the same except for slight differences  so that we can join the edges of the petals to form a circular pattern.   After all, a circle is a polygon with infinite sides (Credit - my children!   Whenever I refer to geometry in Rangolisansdots cred...

Very very small rangoli for daily purpose The images below show some ideas of creating easy and simple designs using spiral patterns for our daily purpose rangolis we draw at the entrance  In continuation to  a post on easy rangoli for beginners that has images of simple rangoli without dots, this post also has  easy rangoli (without dots) or kolam with dots for starters or learners.  It may include free hand rangoli designs involving  two or more steps and some may not be as simple. Some of the designs are based on central designs of rangolis shared in previous posts.     This  is a collection of small rangoli designs or small muggulu designs with images showing steps. Though rangoli can be practised with pencil, sketch pen chalk piece etc traditional rangoli is a class by itself.    Lines with rangoli powder can be drawn as straight and parallel as is possible practically.  However the rangoli when  completed gives a v...