Known worldwide for the exquisite paintings, kalamkari is an art form popular across Andhra Pradesh with its strong roots in Srikalahasthi of Chittoor district and Machilipatnam Krishna District. The craftsmanship reflected in paintings and sarees receive universal admirations across the world for the intricate designs and innate works based on many themes and majority of them exhibit religious events referred from the great epics, puranas and kaavyas of India.

Historians record that Kalamkari Painting is a style of Visual Storytelling originated in 3000 B.C. This is the period when folk singers and painters started narrating stories to the local residents while moving from one place to another. When days passed by, they started using large canvas painting to illustrate the stories and that is how Kalamkari paintings started to reach out to more people.

The group of seasoned craftsmen were called Qualamkars and they were duly recognized during Mughal Era and the art to started to evolve in different dimensions. After people at machilipatnam of Krishna district commenced to practice and exhibit their artistic talents with much more innovative Kalamkari styled paintings, the art entered into the fabric industry and Kalamkari sarees were created.

There are hundreds of artisans in Srikalahasthi working on this Kalamkari paintings which is indeed a tedious procedure to follow. The entire process involves seventeen steps including block making, painting, washing and treating the cloths. It is surprising to know that all the colours used in Kalamkari paintings are prepared organically using vegetable dyes. Kalamkari motifs vary from flowers, peacocks to Gods and Goddesses and characters enumerated in Ramayana and Mahabharatha.

The tedious process involves various steps. All begin with immersing cotton fabric into a mixture of cow dung and bleach to turn the color to off-white. Again, the cloth is immersed in buffalo milk which will allow the Qalamkars to draw freely without any smudges. Later the fabric is washed at least twenty times under running water to get rid of any odours. After this, the artisans draw motifs with tamarind twig as their pen.

All the colors used in these paintings are organic and popular colours used are indigo, mustard, red, blue, yellow and green. Combinations of colours are used to find out new shades like green shade is obtained by combining yellow and green, pomegranate leaves are boiled to get mustard colour and the like.

Though this fantastic art saw a downfall in the recent decades, the fashion industry of India has revived Kalamkari paintings blending it with the fabrics producing unimaginably wonderful products which receive universal admirations from across the globe.

Every traditional art form of India is to be cherished and passed on to future generations and so is Kalamkari Paintings, native to Andhra Pradesh.