Every figure carries a double outline in lampblack.
The chitrakar lays the form once with a hair-brush, then walks the same edge again — the cloth must read at temple-arm's distance.
Pigment is flat, never blended, and always mineral.
Hingula for red, conch for white, turmeric for yellow, gond for green, kala-pathar for black — each ground on stone, bound in neem-tree gum.
Figures sit frontal or in perfect profile — never between.
A three-quarter turn breaks the temple-grammar; the deity must meet the worshipper's gaze, the consort must hold the side-view sacred.
Story stacks downward in registered narrative bands.
The pati is read top to bottom — births above, exiles in the middle, victories near the hem — divided by a thin vermilion rule that the eye obeys.