[2] Artists create these paintings using a variety of mediums, including their own fingers, or twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks.
"[8] The paintings were traditionally done on freshly plastered mud walls and floors of huts, but now they are also done on cloth, handmade paper and canvas.
[3] Artists continue to utilize traditional brushes, which consist of bamboo slivers, rags, and sticks.
Natural objects like the sun, the moon, and religious plants like tulsi are also widely painted, along with scenes from the royal court and social events like weddings.
Artists from other castes incorporated elements from their daily lives, local legends like the story of Raja Shailesh, and various symbols into their paintings.
[11][12] Khobar style, also known as puren,[2] is traditionally painted on the wall of a Mithila wedding chamber, where a bride and groom spend their first night together.
[2] They most often depict circular motifs made up on feminized faces, and lines drawn in red and black ink.
[2] In the 1960s, Madhubani painters began to paint on canvas and paper in an effort to raise new sources of income for women in the impoverished Mithila region.
[2] The Madhubani painting tradition played a key role in the conservation efforts in India in 2012, where there was frequent deforestation in the state of Bihar.
Gram Vikas Parishad, an NGO, led the initiative to protect local trees in Bihar from being cut down from development and road expansion.
Local painters were employed to paint trees with a mixture of lime, glue and synthetic enamel as a deterrent from deforestation.
Paintings included gods and other religious and spiritual images such as those of Radha-Krishna, Rama-Sita, scenes from Ramayana and Mahabharata and other epics.