01 Raise the gesso before the gold.
We trowel a chalk-and-tamarind paste into crown, jewel, and throne — three to five millimetres of relief — so the leaf has a body to catch flame against.
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Four disciplines of the panel
How a panel is made to glow from within.
A working method, carried from oil-lamp workshops to the screen — slow, raised, lit.
02 Hand-lay the leaf while tacky.
Twenty-two-carat beaten leaf is pressed onto warm size with cotton — never brush, never tweezer — so the surface keeps the uneven catch of a real temple panel.
03 Set the stones inside the leaf.
Ruby, emerald, and sapphire-glass are pressed into the soft gesso — nine to fourteen stones per Krishna panel — so the deity wears jewelry, not paint of jewelry.
04 Close the cusped arch in vermilion.
A single brush of vermilion contours every figure and frame — the discipline that separates a Tanjore panel from generic gold work, drawn last, never sketched first.