The Child in me
Recently I have been enrolling in a few art workshops online offcourse, just for fun and to get in the groove of drawing and sketching. For decades I have just been dabbling in colors straight on canvas and making my art.
Though I am very confident and freespirited working on my big canvases as I love to paint directly with bold strokes and bright colors using my brushes and palette knives.
Like, we had to draw with our non dominant hand without looking at the paper, another one was continuous line blind self portraits with the same concept, not looking at paper and also not lifting the pen. Results were hilarious and each and everyone drew such childlike masterpieces, totally inhibited and freeflowing! We all had a hearty laugh making fun of each other's portrait! Some had eyes offcentre, some had ear missing, funniest was hair falling off as wig!
The child in me was awaken and I would eagerly wait for next assignment by our mentor who would give each and everyone a personal feedback in group for every submitted assignment.
Drawing to music with eyes closed and making marks on paper was soo relaxing and meditative and we all enjoyed that. Idea again was to just let go and capture the motion or musicality on paper and not going into details. We were begining to drop our inhibitions.
Last one was to draw with anything but not the usual drawing tools like pen, pencil, brush etc, but instead with cardboard, sponge, jhadoo ki tilli or whatever one fancies. Results were bold and captivating! Finally we were FREE!
Not only were we supposed to submit our drawings at a particular time ( teacher ji was very strict!! After that designated time, grp was closed for submissions) but also in a particular format as instructed at the start. Along with a small note about how our experience was doing that particular assignment. We were our creative best in these 10 days.
But that is not the case when I draw on paper. I find myself hesitant, conscious and my inner critique is always judging and not letting me, be!
So, while looking for some right workshops I came across a unique 'whatsapp spontaneous drawing workshop' by Gopika Nath. Prior to that I did a 1 day abstract nature painting course which I found good but since there was no direct interactions from the guide and I could not get inputs for my creations, it kind of got wasted.
But Gopika Nath's whatsapp workshop for 10 days was super fun with 32 eclectic students including me of all age groups and profession, with the same goal to learn, 'how to draw boldly, without inhibitions'. The workshop was packed with a lot of fun activities, most importantly direct interaction and feedback by mentor on every assignment and also equal participation by each participant.
It started with introductions by each one of us, in our own unique way to describe oneself.
Mind you, one had to be creative in that too.
Than the workshop started with simple assignments to some crazy unique ones.
Experience was exhilarating and refreshing as our own inner critique was asked to 'Shutup'!
These initial assignments relaxed us to take up more challenging ones later. Like next one was motion capture. Drawing moving person, or vehicle , animals, your own pet or anything! Continuing this was another very innovative assignment to draw dancing figures from videos sent by Gopika. This was challenging but fun.
Met some really naughty and talented people in the group, learnt from each other too and definitely from our mentor and her mentoring.
Child in me has awaken and now want to draw and paint BOLD!!!!!
