We conducted another workshop with children at Dadar(West) on 30 April 2016. There were 7 participants : Prisha, Aidan, Aadya, Snehal , Ishaan, Dhruv, Nitya. The children were of the age group (8 to 10 years)
Following activities were conducted:
Mind Exercise
We started with a quick warm-up using a mind stimulating exercise. In this exercise, one participant starts with a random word and the next participant has to immediately blurt out any word that comes to his/her mind, without much thinking. This exercise brings the minds of the participants to a focused, alert state.
Imagine and Expand
The
aim of this activity is to boost the children's imagination. In this
activity, the children were exposed to some famous works of art. About 20 artworks of different artists were shown to them randomly. By
observing the artworks carefully and taking the inspiration from the
artwork, they were supposed to select one object of their choice, from
those artworks.
Once the object was selected. They were told to draw the object on the sheet of paper.
The
children enjoyed watching the artworks and were very keen on
understanding it. They identified the objects, colours, the minute details
like shading, textures. They also could conclude on the subject of the
painting and were thinking and trying to imagine various ideas/ stories
that could come off from the artwork. Some works were shown which were
abstract/surrealistic , to which children responded with their own
understanding.
After the viewing of the artworks we gave them a quick re-cap of all the works once more so that they could recollect and select from what they saw.
The aim was not to just select and draw what they saw from the artworks, but to imagine more about the object they selected and expand it further.
There were some interesting results:
The aim was not to just select and draw what they saw from the artworks, but to imagine more about the object they selected and expand it further.
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| Imagine and Expand Activity |
Children mainly selected their objects from following works.
Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers:
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| Painting to the Left : Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. To the right top row: Dhruv painting sunflowers. To the right bottom : work by Nitya |
Dhruv painted vase with flowers and he also said that he observed some sunflowers with no petals in the shown work, so he also added some to his painting along with butterflies. It was interesting to see how his paper was quite clean and he was focused on just the vase itself leaving the rest of the paper completely blank. Dhruv has a sense of capturing an image greatly in his memory.
Nitya also took inspiration from sunflowers and created vase with flowers and added many smaller vases with flowers to her painting taking liberty; there is no sense of gravity all the smaller vases are floating in air and there is no porportion amongst the vases unless she is trying to show depth. She had made beautiful textures on the big vase. The left flower in the big vase; she has tried to bend her flower which seems to be adapted from the reference painting.
In both the works done by the kids we see a lot of yellow colour which definitely comes from the artists yellow sunflower. Nitya has changed the flower in her drawing but has continued the essence in the form of colour.
Cezanne's still life with apples
Nitya also took inspiration from sunflowers and created vase with flowers and added many smaller vases with flowers to her painting taking liberty; there is no sense of gravity all the smaller vases are floating in air and there is no porportion amongst the vases unless she is trying to show depth. She had made beautiful textures on the big vase. The left flower in the big vase; she has tried to bend her flower which seems to be adapted from the reference painting.
In both the works done by the kids we see a lot of yellow colour which definitely comes from the artists yellow sunflower. Nitya has changed the flower in her drawing but has continued the essence in the form of colour.
Cezanne's still life with apples
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| Painting to the left: Still Life with apples by Paul Cezanne. To the right: work by Aadya |
Aadya chose apples from Cezannes work and she created a basket of apples and added other fruits to her work. Her choice of colours was also interesting. She saw in Vincent Van Gogh painting of sunflowers how he had written his name on the vase, Aadya took that and wrote her own name on the basket. She has taken the compositional sense from Cezannes work with the basket of fruits on the left side and a lone apple on the right. She has shown proportion among the fruits with the pineapple larger than the apples.
Paintings of Dragons
Paintings of Dragons
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| Paintings to the left: Top : Chinese Dragon Painting, Bottom: Surrealistic painting by Jacek Yerka. Paintings on the right : Top: work by Ishaan, Bottom : Work by Aidan |
Ishaan and Aidan selected dragon as their object and created their own works with their imagination adding fire, human figure, tree. Ishaan has created different form of fire. He has also attempted to to shade his creature with interesting colours.
Aidan tried to portray a roaring gesture of the dragon in his work. He wanted to make his work look like a comic. if looked at carefuly his painting seems to be in motion as if its really happening. his groung is quite bare with his composition heavily composed on the upper side almost giving it an antgravity feeling.
The Son of Man (Le fils de l'homme) by René Magritte
Aidan tried to portray a roaring gesture of the dragon in his work. He wanted to make his work look like a comic. if looked at carefuly his painting seems to be in motion as if its really happening. his groung is quite bare with his composition heavily composed on the upper side almost giving it an antgravity feeling.
The Son of Man (Le fils de l'homme) by René Magritte
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| Painting to the left: The Son of Man by Rene Magritte , To the right: work by Prisha |
Prisha selected the Man from Rene Magritte's work and added her own imagination to the work. In the Magritte's work, the children stressed on the red colour of the tie and were also discussing that the man's hand had a shade of red colour. It could be possible that because of their focus on red colour, Prisha chose to paint the hands of the Man in red and also painted his clothes in the same colour. She has made a good attempt to make new shades of blue and gray using the ones that we give them. She is quite confident with her brushwork. But it seems she soon lost patience as others had completed their work and did not complete the painting
Apart from these works, here's Shenal's work which contained objects he recollected from various works.
Apart from these works, here's Shenal's work which contained objects he recollected from various works.
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| Snehal's work |
Paint Together
The aim of this activity is to allow
children to be
guided by their own free creativity and to be inspired by the creativity
of others
who contribute to the painting. A big paper was stuck on the wall, and
children painted on
it one by one. They were supposed to draw/paint something new or
add/modify what is being drawn/painted already. The brush, colours,
markers, crayons were provided and children could freely choose the tool
they liked. In order to allow them to get into the flow, some music was
also played. When the activity started, children came one by one and
carefully drew their drawings on the paper. But as the time passed, with
the effect of music (as we told them to dance and paint) they started
relaxing and used brushes and colours to add to the existing drawings,
filling the shapes, creating something new and also destroying the
earlier work.
As
observed from the previous workshops, it was evident that the children
get influenced by actions of other participant's work so this can be
used positively to allow them to get inspired by other participant's
creativity.
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| Paint Together Activity |
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| Work from Paint Together paint together activity |
