This fusion honours a livelihood you eat off without thinking — the sal-leaf donas and pattals stitched by hand across central and eastern India, here in the Gond heartland where the sal forest provides. The brief was to draw the work itself with dignity, not as folklore décor: a large woman in the foreground caught mid-stitch, leaf and pin in hand, with a second worker behind so the scene reads as a small collective. Sal leaves are perfect for Gond because the vein gives a built-in in-fill — every leaf and finished plate is drawn with radiating vein-lines, so the stacks have rhythm rather than repetition. The basket of pin-sticks and the loose leaves on the ground root the labour. Keeping it medium-light meant letting the dark brown ground breathe between the figures and stacks, with a tree and a few birds so the forest that grows the sal is present at the edge.