Encouraging a discussion on expression through art

I tried a different approach in the drawing class last week. I wanted to see how children interpret art and wanted to encourage them to look beyond just the first impression of a painting and try and see if they could think from the artist's perspective.
It was quite ambitious to try with 6- 8 year olds ! But I wanted to try it anyways !
So I printed out different paintings of horses - one of a tribal painting of horse, a kalamkaari horse, a very realistic oil painting of a horse etc.

I asked the children to point out what the difference was in each painting of the horse. They pointed out things like - this looks like a real horse , this looks very decorated - like a king's horse and so on.
Then I asked them to think about why although all the people that had drawn a horse were very familiar with how a horse looked but still they chose to draw it differently. This set them thinking, but they could'nt come up with any reasons.
So I rephrased it and asked them what is it that the artist wanted to show differently in his painting of the horse - and promptly came up with -the colours - the decoration and - the story .
I was quite impressed that they came up with "story" - a very first step in understanding what the artist wanted to convey through a painting.
So this was quite a good headway in a 15 minute discussion with 5 different paintings of a horse !
The rest of the class was to come up with their own painting of an animal (I passed around simple rubber animal toys that they could use as reference) and convery a story through their painting.

The last step was to sit in a circle and try and see if the others could guess what the child had tried to convey through his /her drawing of the animal.

The stories were simple, the drawings were simple, but I guess I did succeed in getting across a little of the message that it is important to express themselves through their paintings !

Children's creativity

I have been conducting drawing classes for the children in my apartment for 3 months now.
We decided to put up an exhibition of what they created. Other than what they had created in the class, I gathered them to create a Welcome board.
I wrote up each alphabet in 'Welcome' on a piece of paper, and asked them to create a picture from each alphabet ... !
In a span of 20 minutes, the children came up with so many ideas to creatively extend the alphabet... a man from "W"; snail from "e"; Shoe from "L"; birdie from "C"; swimming pool from "O"; little girl from "M"; and key from "E" !!!

I had been teaching them some techniques and had taught them a couple of creative ideas to draw from alphabets "A" and "Q".
But these 20 minutes the children showed so much potential ...and were so full of ideas ..they really made my day !!! Not only did they exhibit so much creativity but also had a great team work ...bouncing off ideas, helping each other ... !!!

We had been preparing for the exhibition for 3 weeks (3 sundays).. the first Sunday I gave them a theme ("icecream") and they came up with their own ideas and drew them up.
The second week, they had to draw something that I had taught them in class. Most children drew the 'hand turkey' ; one of them drew the duck (from alphabet "S") ; and an older child drew the tree from life.
The last week was when they had to make the welcome board.
Each week, the last 15 minutes was spent in giving each other feedback on their painting. I made it clear that they had to call out only what they liked about somebody's painting. This helped to a large extent that they focussed on actually observing what the other person had created, and I was quite impressed at how objective they were with their comments ... "I like the way S. has shaded this part..." or "I like the color combination A. has used for the bird's feathers" ...!

They were so excited the 2 days before the exhibition. They kept following up with me on when I was going to put up the posters inviting people to attend. I had also told them that they could sell their paintings, and that got them all the more kicked about the whole thing ! Some children had even made additional paintings at home and brought them along for display !

The exhibition was just for an hour, but all of them came down to the venue (our apartment clubhouse) a good 45 minutes ahead of time and helped with putting up the paintings. I was mighty impressed with this kind of enthusiasm ... !

Then we decided we would sell each painting for 10 bucks, and also more importantly that it was displaying their painting was the most important thing to do, and they should not be hung up on selling their paintings !

There were just 10 visitors that actually showed up, but the children managed to sell a painting each !!

It was a great ending for the 3 weeks of awesome effort the children had put in !!!

Here is the link to the exhibits.... https://picasaweb.google.com/mangalam.nandakumar/ChildrensExhibition

Little sad girl ...

A couple of weeks back I was hunting for some pictures to put in a slide deck at office, and I came across a picture of a sad little girl. The photo was in black and white, and I was quite caught up with the effect ...and the expression on the girl's face.

I set about trying to capture this using charcoal and graphite pencils.
First cut I used an A4 sized drawing paper and started to sketch the outline ...somehow that did not come out alright, and the paper size seemed a little cramped ....so I trashed that and started out with a slightly larger size. This is a quarter of the regular 'chart paper'.
I drew the outline first with a 'H' pencil and checked if the proportions were right. (I usually verify my outline by asking someone else to have a look at it - this time it was my mom. Having another person look at it , gives a different perspective and helps you catch some minor missing details - my mom pointed out that I had drawn the hands leaner ..and they needed to be a little plumpy !)

I did the second round of checking - looking at the reflection of the sketch in the mirror. This is useful technique to catch some very obvious flaws ! This helped me correct the size and tilt of the head. (children's head to body proportions are different from adults...)

Then I tried the third trick ..which is to leave the sketch as it was, and returned to check it after 4-5 hours. It looked satisfactory, and now I proceeded to fill in the details.

I identified the brightest areas in the photo and shaded those with a 'H' and blended in with a paper. Now I started to shade the slightly darker areas with a charcoal pencil ...but using rough lines and then blending in. Once the entire figure was shaded, I started to darken the shadow areas. and the frills on the dress.
At every stage I checked with the mirror !

I had done with the neck and body, and the head was yet to be complete...
I drew an outline of the eyes , nose and mouth. The mouth took quite a few attempts to get it right...the chubbiness of the cheeks had to show !!
Once done, I did the hair with charcoal and completed the face.
Satisfied with what I saw , I checked again with my mom, the mirror and took a digital photo of this. The photo made another few minor missing details obvious, such as a shade missing here or a frill having no shadow...After the finishing touches, here is how the sad little girl turned out to be !

I did this in 3 hours, across 2 days.

The re-discovery of the easel

It is now 2 weeks since I started the drawing classes at my apartment. 5 children so far and loads of fun.
For the past 2 classes I was dependent on the card tables setup at my apartment clubhouse. the 5 children could use it - there was ample space, but it was a little too high and no so convenient. More over I am expecting another 3-5 children to join the classes, so the table itself would not be sufficient.

I started to first think on the lines of buying new tables. But the issue with that was I would have to find a place to keep it in the clubhouse or at my home. If at home I'll have to carry the table every week for the classes. None of this seemed practical.

After long drawn thought I decided that the best way forward was to get easels. This had a few advantages - one, they would be carried easily from home. Even if I had to keep them in the clubhouse itself, they would not occupy too much space. More importantly, I could place them such that the children would not have to cram together, and that also meant they would not be able to keep talking to each other all the time :)

So, having settled on the easel idea, the next was the cost. Some of the professional ones found in the market cost anywhere between Rs 1000 to Rs 3000. This was too much of an investment to make at this point.

I now decided to design my own easel ! After brainstorming the idea with my father, we both decided on a design - a simple "H" shaped structure

The other key thing was that the angle should be adjustable; a board (on which paper can be clipped) must have support,; and the height at which the board can be fixed must also be adjustable.

With these in mind, we decided to go for "slotted angle bars" for the structure.

We finally tracked down a place near home that supplied these slotted angle bars, and while trying out the design - we refined it to an "A" shaped structure that can be slanted against the wall. The horizontal bar in the "A" can be adjusted to any height.

For the board itself for now we have used canvas boards (although hardboard wood is what is still on the cards)

The result was a simple easel that fit my needs, was very cost effective, and offered a lot of flexibility in design, very usable (the children liked it and used it easily too), and was very quickly assembled.

Now the easel is now counted as my (and my father's) art piece too :)

Inspiration from bamboos

This weekend being a long one, I took my son and parents out to Bannerghatta zoo. For all the animals and people that I saw there, it was the unassuming yet ubiquitous bamboo that caught my attention. What an amazingly random arrangement - each shoot tilting in its own angle and yet all of them when put together form such a lovely composition.

So as always true for me – I had the urge to pour out what I saw of the bamboos onto paper!

This is the result of that urge. J

I used acrylic paints over a sheet of acrylic primed oil sketching paper. This also seemed like the perfect fit for a knife panting – the strokes for drawing the shoots are all entirely knife.

I started with an outline of the shoots and angles at which I wanted to represent them. Then I painted the entire sheet with a lemon yellow background.

Next, using sap green, lemon yellow and white – I started applying the layers on the bamboo shoots – with a painting knife. Once the shoots were finalized, I started to paint the leaves. I started with a smaller painting knife and then the finishing was done with a brush. The leaves are hooker’s green.

Finally to add a little more depth, I mixed raw umber with hooker’s green to give padding between the shoots, and in some places outlining the shoots too.

All of that took me about an hour’s time.