paintings and crafts

This is a tanjore painting , this kind of painting is becoming very popular. nowadays people like to gift them esp during weddings.tanjore painting originated in the region of thanjavur, in Tamil nadu during the chola rule. the paintings features mainly images of gods and goddess'es . Here the the images of the gods are rounded (ie; chubby with almong shaped eyes0. the actual speciality of this kind of painting is the relief work , on which a layer of real 24 K gold is done for the mandaps and ormna ments.In earlier days, real precious and semi-precious stones like diamonds, ruby and emeralds were used. nowadays we use jaipur stones . so that the painting becomes affordable both for learning aswell to buy.. it involves real hard work and lots and lots of paitence. it takes about a week to complete a medium sized picture. but the end result is simply awesome. i have adorned the walls of my living room with many tanjote paintings, which are my most faviorate. i will post some them later. i will also post some of the paintings done by some of my students. many of them , even people above 60 yrs have joined for the tanjore painting classes, and have learnt the same.