Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v2.c77.122

v2.c77.122

Mixture of colours—thousand of them,—cannot be described in full in any treatise. They are always left (the tradition agrees to it) to the imagination of the artist. Great emphasis is laid by the ancient masters on the light and dark shade of every tone. Again it may also be noted that for every phenomenon the brush with paints are not needed. “The colour has partly descriptive and partly suggestive significance”. For example take sky or the atmosphere, Viṣṇudharmottarra illustrates this phenomenon in both descriptive as well as suggestive colours. In the former, the sky is to be represented in blue colour of blue lotus and wearing a garment of that colour, if represented as a statue, it should carry the sun and the moon in its hands (cf. V. D. Part III, Ch. 62, verses 1-2). In the latter however, taken in a naturalistic and descriptive sense, it has to be painted as almost without any special colour.