Kovar stills.

Design information

For my assignment, I explored the unique Kovar and Sohrai art forms of Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. These traditional folk arts are created by layering clay on walls and then scraping it to carve intricate designs. The process results in textured patterns that reflect the natural world, with motifs inspired by animals, plants, and geometric shapes structured and charactersed in a way that narrates a story or an incident occured in the community’s history which is only secretive to the people residing their. They also have a rare seasonal approach to their way of coming about the final design. They lay out the the clay during winters and and scrape it to reveal the final design right before harvest season. Kovar is characterised purely by its black and white clay finish while Sohrai is painted using brushes and earthen colors

The assignment required me to represent the five elements of nature: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space/Sky, through symbolic animals, trees, and flowers. I selected a bird, land animal, water animal, tree, and flower motif to pair with each element. I decided to design backing cards, drawing on Kovar and Sohrai techniques for inspiration following the exact same steps essentially implemented during the actual process but digitally. Similarly scraping and and reveal each motif layer by layer. The final five designs incorporated abstract, geometric patterns predominantly in the Kovar art style thus sticking to black and white colors but later on i furthered its potential by adding colors to confine it to a bit of my art style as well.