Easy Madhubani Art: 6 Simple Designs You Can Draw Today | Varnaalaya Arts

Mithila · Bihar · Step by step

Easy Madhubani Art: 6 Simple Designs You Can Draw Today

Q: What is Madhubani art called in Bihar?

Mithila painting, after the Mithila region. Madhubani is the name of a district within the region.

Q: Why is there no empty space in Madhubani paintings?

Filling every gap is a formal convention of the tradition. An unfilled area reads as unfinished, so gaps are filled with flowers, dots, birds, leaves and geometric marks.

Q: Does Madhubani art have a GI tag?

Yes. Mithila or Madhubani painting holds Geographical Indication registration linking the name to its region of origin in Bihar.

Six motifs, in order of difficulty, each drawable in under an hour with a black pen and paper. What every one of them means, and how to fill it the Mithila way.

Varnaalaya Arts · 11 August 2026 · 11 min read

A note on honesty before we start: nobody masters Madhubani in five minutes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The women of Mithila who paint these walls have been drawing the same motifs since childhood. What you can do today, with no training, is draw one recognisable Madhubani motif properly — and the six below are the ones to start with.

Key takeaways

Madhubani painting, also called Mithila painting, comes from the Mithila region of Bihar and was traditionally painted by women on the freshly plastered mud walls of their homes.
Three rules make a drawing read as Madhubani: a double outline, no empty space, and flat colour with no shading.
The easiest motif to start with is the fish. One lens-shaped body, a triangular tail, and hatching — about twenty minutes.
Every motif carries meaning. Fish for fertility, lotus for the marriage chamber, bamboo for lineage, sun and moon for permanence.
You need three things: thick paper, a fine black pen, and four or five colours. Nothing else.
Realistic timing: 20–40 minutes per motif for a first attempt. The filling takes longer than the drawing, always.
The tradition moved from walls to paper in the 1960s, which is why it can be practised at a desk at all.

What is Madhubani art?

Madhubani art is a folk painting tradition from the Mithila region of Bihar, India, characterised by bold double outlines, dense pattern fill that leaves no empty space, flat unshaded colour, and figures with large lens-shaped eyes. It was made by women on the mud walls of their homes, particularly the kohbar ghar or nuptial chamber, and moved onto paper in the 1960s.

The move to paper is the part that matters for you. During the Bihar drought of the late 1960s, the All India Handicrafts Board sent the artist Bhaskar Kulkarni into the region to encourage the wall painters to work on paper so their work could be sold. It worked. Artists including Sita Devi, Ganga Devi and Jagdamba Devi became nationally known, and the tradition survived as a portable practice — which is why a beginner with a sketchbook is doing something continuous with it rather than something borrowed from it.

The three rules that make a drawing Madhubani

If you follow only three conventions, an untrained drawing will still read as Madhubani: outline everything twice, leave no area empty, and never shade.

1. Draw every outline twice

A single line, then a second line running parallel a few millimetres outside it. The channel between the two lines is then filled with short cross-strokes or left blank. This double line is the single most recognisable feature of the tradition, and it is also the most commonly skipped by beginners.

2. Leave no empty space

Background is not background. Every gap gets filled — small flowers, dots, wavy lines, triangles, birds, leaves. In Mithila terms an unfilled area is unfinished, not minimal. Budget more time for filling than for drawing.

3. Use flat colour, no shading

Colour goes down as one even tone inside a black outline. No gradients, no highlights, no blending, no attempt at three dimensions. Figures are shown from the front or in full profile, and scale follows importance rather than perspective.

What you need to start

Cartridge or handmade paper, 150 gsm or heavier — thin paper buckles under fill work
A fine black pen, 0.3–0.5 mm, or a black gel pen; traditionally a bamboo twig or matchstick wrapped in cotton
An HB pencil for the light under-drawing
Four or five colours only: red, yellow, green, blue, black. Poster paint, acrylic or even sketch pens all work
A size 2 round brush if you are painting rather than pen-colouring

Traditional pigments were made at home: lamp soot for black, turmeric for yellow, kusum flower or sandalwood for red, bel leaves for green, indigo for blue, rice paste for white. Worth knowing, not worth sourcing on day one.

The six easy Madhubani designs

These six motifs are ordered from easiest to hardest: fish, sun and moon, lotus, elephant, peacock, and tree of life. Each is a complete traditional motif in its own right, not a simplified exercise.

Fish
- Easiest
- 20 min
The motif every Mithila apprentice draws first, and the one that best teaches the double outline.
1. Draw a pointed oval — a lens — for the body.
2. Add a triangle tail at the left, notched in the middle.
3. Trace a second outline just inside the first.
4. Hatch the inner body with diagonal strokes; add two curved fins.
5. Draw the eye as a small lens, not a circle.
Meaning: fertility, prosperity and good fortune. Painted in pairs at weddings.
Sun and moon
- Easy
- 25 min
Two circles and a crescent. The best motif for practising even, rhythmic ray spacing.
1. Compass or trace a circle; add a second circle inside it.
2. Mark twelve evenly spaced rays around the outside.
3. Give the sun a face: lens eyes, a curved mouth.
4. Fill the inner ring with radiating strokes.
5. Add a crescent moon beside it, filled flat.
Meaning: permanence and the witness to a marriage — the pair endures as the sun and moon do.
Lotus
- Easy
- 30 min
The motif at the centre of every kohbar wall, and a lesson in radial symmetry.
1. Draw a small circle at the centre.
2. Add four petals at the compass points, then four between them.
3. Double-outline every petal.
4. Alternate the fill: hatched, then flat, then hatched.
5. Dot the centre and ring it with a second circle.
Meaning: the female principle in the kohbar, and purity. Usually paired with bamboo.
Elephant
- Moderate
- 35 min
Bold, forgiving shapes, but the patterned blanket is where the real fill practice happens.
1. Draw the body as one rounded mass, back curving down to the tail.
2. Add four straight legs and a curving trunk.
3. Draw a large ear as a spiral or nested curve, then double-outline it.
4. Give it a blanket and divide that into three or four bands.
5. Fill each band with a different pattern — dots, chevrons, waves.
Meaning: strength, royalty and rain. Often carries a bridegroom in procession scenes.
Peacock
- Moderate
- 40 min
The Madhubani peacock stands upright with plumes rather than a wide fan — a different bird from the Kalamkari one.
1. Draw the body as a tilted oval and a long S-curved neck.
2. Add a small round head, a beak, and a three-point crest with dots.
3. Fan five plumes upward from behind the body.
4. Cap each plume with a circle, and fill the circles alternately.
5. Hatch the body; add two straight legs.
Meaning: love, the monsoon and Krishna. A frequent companion to the kohbar lotus.
Tree of life
- Hardest here
- 45 min
The full test: symmetry, branching, and filling a large area without losing rhythm.
1. Draw the trunk as two parallel vertical lines — the double outline is built in.
2. Branch outward in mirrored pairs, three levels up.
3. Cap each branch with a leaf or a flower, alternating.
4. Perch a bird on the lowest branch either side, facing outward.
5. Fill every remaining gap with dots and small leaves.
Meaning: lineage, continuity and the household itself. Bamboo does the same job in kohbar walls.

Five mistakes beginners make

Skipping the second outline Without it, the drawing reads as generic line art. This is the fastest fix available and the one that changes the most.
Leaving the background empty A white gap around a motif signals unfinished work in this tradition. Fill it, even roughly.
Shading The instinct to add depth is strong and wrong here. Flat tone only.
Too many colours Five is plenty. A twelve-colour drawing loses the graphic snap the black outline gives you.
Colouring before the ink is dry Smudged black outline over a fill is unrecoverable. Ink, wait, then colour, then re-ink.

The five traditional Madhubani styles

Madhubani is traditionally divided into five styles — Bharni, Kachni, Godna, Tantrik and Kohbar — which historically corresponded to different communities within Mithila before the distinctions loosened in the twentieth century.

Styles at a glance
Style	Defining feature	Typical subject
Bharni	Solid flat colour filling the outlines	Deities — Krishna, Ram, Shiva, Durga
Kachni	Fine hatched line work, little or no colour	Dense pattern, flora and fauna
Godna	Tattoo-derived, built from repeated small marks in concentric bands	Village life, processions, ritual
Tantrik	Ritual diagrams and symbolic geometry	Religious and tantric iconography
Kohbar	The nuptial-chamber composition: lotus pond and bamboo	Marriage, fertility, union

For a beginner, Kachni is the most useful entry point. It needs one black pen, it teaches the fill discipline that everything else depends on, and it looks finished without any colour at all.

Madhubani or Kalamkari — which should you learn first?

Learn Madhubani first. It needs only paper and a pen, its motifs are geometric and forgiving, and mistakes disappear into the pattern fill. Kalamkari demands a steadier continuous line and, in its traditional form, a dye process rather than a drawing process.

The two are worth knowing together, though — they are the two great pen-led folk traditions of India, one from Bihar and one from Andhra Pradesh, and they solve the same problem of filling a surface in completely different ways. If you want the other half of the picture, our complete guide to Kalamkari art covers its meaning, origin, types and its own step-by-step drawing method.

Questions people ask about Madhubani art

Can a beginner really learn Madhubani art quickly?

A beginner can draw one recognisable Madhubani motif in twenty to forty minutes on their first attempt. Becoming fluent in the tradition — its compositions, its symbolism, its speed — takes years of practice.

What is the easiest Madhubani design to draw?

The fish. It is a single lens-shaped body with a triangular tail, and it teaches the double outline and hatched fill that every other motif depends on.

What materials do I need for Madhubani painting?

Thick paper of 150 gsm or heavier, a fine black pen, a pencil, and four or five colours. Traditional practice uses a bamboo twig or matchstick wrapped in cotton, and pigments made from soot, turmeric, kusum flower, bel leaves and indigo.

What is Madhubani art called in Bihar?

Mithila painting, after the Mithila region. Madhubani, the more common name outside Bihar, is the name of a district within that region.

Why is there no empty space in Madhubani paintings?

Filling every gap is a formal convention of the tradition — an unfilled area reads as unfinished rather than minimal. Gaps are filled with flowers, dots, birds, leaves and geometric marks.

What do the motifs in Madhubani art mean?

Fish stand for fertility and prosperity, lotus for purity and the female principle, bamboo for lineage, elephants for strength and rain, peacocks for love and the monsoon, and the sun and moon for permanence.

Who are the best-known Madhubani artists?

Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Jagdamba Devi, Mahasundari Devi, Baua Devi and Godavari Dutta are among the most widely recognised, several of them national award recipients.

Is Madhubani painting done only by women?

It was historically a women's practice passed from mother to daughter on household walls. Since the tradition moved onto paper as a commercial art in the 1960s, men paint it too.

Can Madhubani be painted on cloth or canvas?

Yes. Paper remains the most common surface, but the style is regularly worked on cloth, canvas, wood and walls.

Does Madhubani art have a GI tag?

Yes — Mithila or Madhubani painting holds Geographical Indication registration, linking the name to its region of origin in Bihar.

Draw one, then come see what a lifetime of it looks like

Varnaalaya Arts works with practising folk artists rather than reproductions — hand-drawn line, natural palettes, and motifs that carry their original meanings.

Browse Madhubani paintings and wall art, or read the companion Kalamkari guide for the southern half of the story.

Drawn one of the six? Send it to us — we feature reader attempts.

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