Bakery Painting: The Process and Execution
Written by: Namita and Aswi Bhavanam
Leading up to camp, the geckos went through weeks of planning what and how we wanted to decorate the walls of the Haritachala bookstore that we are transforming into a bakery in the future. There is a lot of work to be done, so we picked one thing to focus on and narrowed down our ideas to just painting the borders of each wall during the duration of our summer camp. During our planning meetings, we decided to paint floral vine borders that blend traditional and modern art elements. The design was digitally drawn by Hasita, inspired by a reference we found online.
The next thing we had to figure out was how we would execute the idea and also ensure the paintings looked the way we wanted them. After extensive research, we decided to print the digitally drawn border designs to match the exact dimensions of the walls. This resulted in nearly 20 A4-sized sheets, each containing fragments of the artwork that, when pieced together like a puzzle, formed the complete border design. To ensure consistency across all the walls—and to make it a task that any of the girls could contribute to, even if drawing wasn’t their strength—we used carbon tracing paper to transfer the border designs.
Fast forward to camp—on our first official day of painting, we began by arranging all the printouts to match the dimensions of the first wall’s arch. We then taped the sheets up on the wall and taped tracing sheets under each sheet so that we can easily outline the design on the sheet and get a carbon print on the wall. We spent at least a couple of hours on most days dedicated to painting. While one group traced the current wall, others prepared the design and taped printouts for the next. Once tracing was done, a few of us would begin painting, keeping the flow continuous and collaborative. Everything happened simultaneously, and this was a cyclical process until each wall was completed.
Throughout this process, we learned the importance of and embraced teamwork and collaboration. Understanding each person’s strengths was also a crucial step in our process. People who were more comfortable with the logistics of assembling the printouts and taping worked on that while people who had a greater interest and/or talent in art traced and painted the vines and flowers. Even the painting part had a certain level of collaboration built in.
The girls who weren’t too confident in their precision with a paint brush, stuck with tracing or painting in bigger elements such as the flowers while girls who had that ability to cleanly work with a paintbrush worked on painting the birds, vines, and outlining the flowers. Though all of us are artistically inclined and talented, we were equally committed to ensuring that our work reflected the very best we could produce. The teamwork that occurred wasn’t limited to just the painting work we were doing. It was seen even in the simplest of things such as the geckos handing brushes, paint, food, water, etc to those who were on ladders painting. Some were moving around the fans to give some air to different people, while others were holding the ladders for each other so that no one would fall. Some of the girls helped clean up while the others were still working, and so on. It was beautiful. We worked as a unit and created a artistic outcome.
