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Constellations of Children's Art |
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| Shilpa Shah |
These paintings were made by students at the Gujarat Research Society's Jasudben M. L. School, in Mumbai, India. Shilpa Shah, the art teacher at the school, writes about the context of her art teaching: |
In India, all schools generally have art in their syllabus. Schools follow the government directive of six subjects in art: • Still life or object drawing and painting; • Nature drawing and painting (which includes flowers); • Creative design, for example: pot, pillow cover, tabletop; • Freehand drawing and painting includes symmetrical or asymmetrical designs, which children enlarge and copy; • Memory drawing and painting includes a scene, which they have witnessed and registered in their mind such as accident, garden, and hawkers' market place. This requires proportionate figure drawing; • Geometry – construction of triangle, circle, square, and other shapes. At the age of 3 to 4 years, children are asked to draw a ball, umbrella, and flower. At the age of 5 to 6 years, they are asked to draw more difficult things like a house, myself, beach, pattern drawing. By 7 to 9 years, they draw an imaginary scene, or a scene, which they have witnessed in past such as a balloon man outside a garden, or garden where children are playing on a swing. Between 9 and 12 years, more difficult subjects like a birthday party, festivals, and design for a pot or hand fan. When children are 13 to 14 years, they are supposed to draw an accident site, festivals, environment, classroom activity, sports, and objects like bucket, mug, tomatoes, brinjal, and coconut. Thereafter there is no art in school except for schools which follow Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) or Central Board Secondary Education (CBSE) wherein students can opt for art as a subject if they thinks they are good at drawing and painting. In order to enhance children's interest and make art enjoyable in the classroom, we correlate art with other subjects such as history, geography and mathematics. We talk about people from different parts of the world including India and their art and culture. So the topics become interesting and learning becomes enjoyable. The projects that we teach in school include Warli art (Indian Tribal art), Madhubani art (Indian Folk art), masks, cave paintings, Egyptian art, Wycinanki (art of Poland), Indus valley civilisation (art and artifacts), Japanese art. All this was possible because of the constant encouragement given by the then principal Mrs. Kishori Mehta and the present principal Mrs. Asha Bhandari who gave Mrs. Varsha Trivedi (our earlier art teacher) and myself full freedom to change the pattern and not rigidly follow the typical syllabus in school. We experimented in the class of almost 45 to 50 children. It was difficult to get 100% success, but in some projects like Warli art, we did get 70% success and other projects 50 to 60% successes. With such innovative teaching, children do not lose interest in art but get excited to be creative and open-minded. When asked how these percentages are arrived at and how is "success" measured? Shilpa responded: We do not judge children for the work they do. We judge success of a project hence the percentages indicated are the project success rate. My way of judging success of a project depends primarily on free expression demonstrated in the artwork, understanding and retaining the characteristics of the basic forms in their drawing or painting and the creative inputs added to the subject. Weighting's are given to each of these parameters and then if 30 children in a class of 40 are able to demonstrate these abilities in their artwork then the success is 75%. Madhubani Art |
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Madhubani art is traditional folk art. It is transferred from one generation to the next. People paint Madhubani art to decorate their walls on special occasions. This is art of Bihar state in India. The place was originally called Madhuban wherein the part Madhu means Nectar and Ban means Forest. Bihar land was once upon a time a very fertile place where variety of vegetation was grown. Women mainly painted Madhubani art as men were busy working in the fields. Even today mainly women artists carry on the tradition of painting Madhubani art and this is passed on from one generation to the next generation. The subject matter is mainly from the epics of Ramayana & Mahabharata, life of Gods and Goddesses with nature as the background. Line drawing is done in black or blue obtained from coal or soot. Natural dyes were used. The main colours used are yellow (from Turmeric), magenta or pink or orange (from flowers such as shoe flower), blue (from vegetable dye), and green (from leaves). Many times very intricate and beautiful pictures were done only in line drawing without use of colours. Here, proportionate figures are not considered as important as details and intricacy. This art can be mastered by presenting their typical patterns such as figures with side face and big eyes having full eyeballs. A book about Madhubani art, which I would like to recommend, is Gangadevi's book Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting by Jyotindra Jain. Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Ahmedabad, India, publishes it in association with Mithila Museum, Nigata, Japan. Warli Art |
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As you may be aware Warli paintings, like Madhubani paintings were introduced internationally through Indian handicrafts. Warli Art is from Thane, which is about 50 kilometres from Mumbai. It is a tribal art. Warli tribes were earlier hunters. But as the city started growing, animals were driven away & the tribes could not depend on only hunting. Hence they started farming. They live a frugal life & believe that one should only take from the earth what you need, and nothing more. Even today the tribal house is in two parts; on one side they stay & on the other side their animals live. Tribal people are very simple & have rice as their main crop. Hence paste is made from extra rice that is available & used for painting this art on brown walls of their house. The walls are coated with mud and cow dung and brush is made from bamboo stick and cotton. It would be worth noting that rice paste attracts insects whereas cow dung acts as a repellent. They paint when there is a special occasion such as marriage or birth of a child in their house. Paintings depict their daily activities apart from representing festivals and celebrations. They paint Gods and Goddess and their legendary stories. The style of painting is very simple. A book I can recommend is The Warlis Tribal Paintings and Legend by Jiva and Balu Mashe, published by Chemould Publications and Arts, Mumbai, India. |
Shilpa Shah, art teacher at the Jasudben M. L. School, has a degree in Bachelor of Art with a Major in Sociology & Psychology. She then completed a 3-year course in Textile Designing. After completion of this course, she was appointed as a Textile Designer in one of the reputed Textile Mills in Mumbai. She also worked as a freelance designer in fabric painting. Realising the need for developing good skills in artwork amongst youngsters, she next taught Art & Craft at college level. During this college level teaching, she felt that passion for art gets inculcated in students at the school level itself and a strong foundation in art can be laid at an early stage. She then took up a job as an Art Teacher in Jasudben M. L. School teaching art at primary as well as secondary levels. She has been teaching art in this school for more than a decade. |
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| Sun Art_Textile Design by Shilpa Shahu |
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