Dot grids: your first kolam
A 3×3 grid, one unbroken line, about fifteen minutes. The oldest drawing lesson there is.
Draft copy. This piece was written during the site build and is waiting on an editorial pass — the facts are checked, the prose is not final.
You need a pen and a sheet of plain paper. No ruler.
The grid
Mark nine dots in a 3×3 square, about two centimetres apart. Make them small — they are reference points, not part of the drawing.
The rule
Draw one line that loops around every dot. It must not cross a dot and it must not lift from the page. It must come back to where it started.
How to start
Begin between two dots on the outside edge. Curve around the nearest dot, come back out the other side, carry on to the next. When you reach a corner, loop it and turn. Keep going until you are back at your starting point.
What will go wrong
You will trap yourself: you will reach a dot you need to loop and find no way to get to it without crossing something. That is normal and it is the actual puzzle. Start again — a kolam cannot be corrected, only redrawn, which is exactly why it is traditionally drawn in rice flour on a floor and swept away each day.
Then
Do a 5×5. Then a 5×5 with the corner dots removed, which is a padi kolam and behaves differently.
Next lesson
Dividing a circle: the root of every mandala
Six, eight and twelve divisions with a compass. Half an hour, and after it the geometry families stop being mysterious.
Keep going
Other lessons
Start here: how to hold the pen
Ten minutes on grip, speed and pressure. Everything else in this section assumes you have done this once.
Straight lines and circles without a ruler
Two drills, twenty minutes, and the reason your circles close badly.
Building a girih pattern from the five tiles
Draw the tile set, lay it out, then draw the strapwork across it and rub the tiles out. Forty-five minutes.