Colors used in Pattachitra and their sources

Pattachitra painting, an organic folk art, uses all its materials in their natural states. Thus, the colors used, too, are made of natural ingredients like china-clay, soft-clay or chalk, conch-cell, red stone, yellow-brown-ochre, and so forth. Charcoal powder is used for coloring black; sea shells available in bountiful amounts on the sea coasts of Odisha, for white; juices of boiled green leaves along with proportionate amounts of gum of Kaitha or Bilwa fruit, or unique green stones, or simply a clever mixture of black and yellow in specific proportion, for green; powdered hingula (red ochre), powdered using pastle stone and then formed into a tablet to be dried, for red; powdered harital stone (yellow ochre) mixed with water and...