I conducted an Art Workshop alongside a Creative Writing Workshop at Chimbel. Getting the children to be disciplined was a bit of a challenge for me…the little children who were juniors, were sitting in a half circle around me.
On the first day of the workshop, the children were a bit too jumpy and excited, and I found it difficult to control them at first. This is why I thought I would never succeed in handling them ever, but things slowly began to fall into place.
The first activity that I had planned for them was the hand print dinosaur. I showed the children how to add spikes to the dinosaur outline (that I had drawn with a black marker on a chart paper previously) and they colored it with their fingers. The original plan was to color the dinosaur with their thumbs alone. I asked them to use their index finger because time was running out: the dinosaur i drew was too big and the kids were unable to be flexible with just their thumbs.
The Children enjoyed it very much. I noticed how they were very sad when I took the chart paper away. I JUST HAD TO DO IT. There wasn’t time for the next two activities I had planned for them. Later when the session was over and done with I allowed them to experiment with painting the grass with brushes. This was not part of the plan, but I did this anyway because I felt they were ready for a feel of using paint brushes as well and what’s more is that they were going on asking me, so how could I say no?
For the next activity, i.e. the hand print caterpillar, was also done on a chart. I painted a head with two feelers, and the children used hand prints to complete its body. The result was a bright red caterpillar and the children were not happy that I took that one away from them as well as time demanded that we move on to the next activity.
The third activity was the hand print flower. The children did this on A4 size papers, and made a bunch of flowers with a green stem using their hand print and I painted flowers on each of them and they got to take this home. The session went exactly according to plan and they went home all happy and excited to show their parents their art work Prajana took a photo and they happily posed for the shot with me in it.
On day 2, the children came at the same time and place, i.e. at the library, all excited to attend the workshop. The first activity that I did with them was a picture of the sun. I made outlines of the children’s hands. The previous day I noticed the children seemed to be confident with brushes, so instead of using crayons to color the cut-outs I made the children paint their hand outline cut-outs by themselves. These were stuck on another chart paper as the sun’s rays. Prajana helped me to cut them and put glue on them, around the circle I drew. This big circle they colored with yellow crayons. When they finished the children looked very happy with themselves and I could see smiles on their faces when they were done. This time I didn’t have to take away the drawing, and they themselves handed it to me.
After that I taught them to draw a cartoon of a girl, by making them copy my movements from the blackboard. Teaching step by step and allowing them to copy my movements as i drew the cartoon on the blackboard one feature at a time seemed to make it easier to draw even more difficult things. They did this on A4 size paper and they especially the girls were very keen to do it, and happy with the results and happily posed for the picture with smiles on their faces
On day 3, 7 children attended. I did a collage with them, on a chart paper. On the chart paper was the outline of a tree, a butterfly and flowers, I had carried some colored bits of paper that they stuck on this chart, and the end was a beautiful collage. I told them to stick green and brown on the tree, any color of their choosing on the butterfly, they chose yellow with blue dots, and then they stuck orange bits for the flowers. We finished the collage very quickly, I think today too they were scared I’d take away their paper so they were doing it very fast.
Teaching them to draw a cartoon of a girl with more detailed features was the next Activity. They copied me the way they did on the previous day and were happy to take their drawings home.
All in all, I would love to conduct an art workshop again soon…because apart from teaching to draw and paint, my confidence in myself built up and I felt wonderful.