of D. Vaikuntam, D.Nageshar, D.Rakesh, D.Vinay Kumar, D.Venkataramana, D.Pavan Kumar.D.Saikiran,D.sravan kumar. Dhanalokota Vaikuntam started learning work from his father Venkataramiah and elder brother Chandraiah at the age of 12. He studied intermediate and at present he is living at Hyderabad. He got married with vanaja at the age of 20. After the marriage with Vaikuntam, vanaja also started doing Cherial painting. He trained to his children Sarika, Rakesh and Vinay Kumar. He received many awards and certificates for his excellency in Cherial painting. Today the long stories from the local mythologies have been cut short, as the traditional patrons for the long scrolls no longer exist. The artists have been forced to adapt and nowadays they paint smaller versions of the scrolls, depicting a single episode or character from the traditional stories. These are amenable to framing and can be hung on walls in modern homes. Further, the colours are no longer prepared in the traditional manner. While earlier, they used natural white extracted from sea shells, black from lampsoot and yellow from turmeric. The Tradition The traditional art form became an inseparable part of the profession of the story-telling, balladeer community known as Kaki Padagollu. They displayed the scrolls and accompanied by music and dance went from village to village narrating and singing their ballads based from their rich folklore which was rooted in the Puranas and Indian Epics, enlivening many a lazy village evening. In a typical recitation, the storyteller-balladeer would wander from village to village in a team of usually five people, with two to narrate the story while the others would provide a simple but hectic musical accompaniment with the harmonium, tabala and castanets. The stage would also be a simple affair (many times even to the extent of being a rough and ready fixture), erected on four poles with a horizontal bar on which the scrolls could be displayed. The scroll would flow like a film roll. It was generally about three feet in width and went up to 40 – 45 feet in length, depending upon the story. The traditional scrolls are normally in vertical format, illustrating stories in a series of horizontal panels. A floral border in the middle separates the two panels, while the linear narrative is demonstrated by holding in both hands or suspending it from a tree or a building and continually rolling it. Like large sized comic strips, each