just: Art

Today’s class topic was tints and shades. We divided the class into two parts. In the first 30-40 minutes we introduced the concepts of monotone painting, tints, hues and how to achieve them.

The students created first created a series of 5 hues, followed by a series of 5 tints. This was done simultaneously along with the demonstration by the teacher.

We started by first explaining the basic proportions of the human body.

We then proceeded to explain the type of poses that work best for a gesture drawing session.

After that, the students started posing one by one. We started with 30 second poses for the first half of the class. The rest of the class tried to capture the gesture on their papers.

Storyboarding is not a drawing skill. Storyboard is writing a story visually. The Japanese animation industry understands that well.

So, the Ghibli is not a cartoon image, it’s a small town where stories grow organically. That’s why the world responds to these stories. There is no pressure on them to be “profitable” stories, political stories, ideological war fare stories or the moral stories. They are just stories. That’s what is Ghibli style.

This week our class travelled back to ancient India, to learn about the millennia-old doodle art form — mandala drawing. Mandalas have spiritual significance in Hinduism and Buddhism, and practitioners channel cosmic forces into their patterns as they enter a meditative headspace while doodling patterned shapes.

“The mandala gives a person a sacred space to meet their inner self” our teacher writes, in her class notes.

In this class, students took turns posing in the middle of a circle. The rest of the class drew them. Our goal was to break hesitation in drawing the human form.

This exercise really bonded the group, and as women in the neighbouring barracks saw what was happening, they came to out watch the class. Some asked for paper and joined in. Others pushed their way into the middle of the circle to pose so their fellow prisoners could draw them.

We introduced the work of Henri Matisse and built a class around using colour for expression and not just description. Then I gave everyone a pre-selected colour palette of 5 colours.

I asked everyone to mix the colours they had been given on their palettes. They had never ever done this before — but they couldn’t wait to try. All I told them was the basic rules of mixing.

Most did it intuitively, without needing too much help. One or two people didn’t get it right in the beginning. I told them — think of it as though you’re making daal. You don’t get it perfect the first time!

We started with shading squares with values ascending from 1 to 12. 1 being white and 12 being black. 12 was an arbitrary number, however it stuck with the students. I introduced the concept of bunching values as light (1-4), medium (5-8) and dark (9-12).

In the next part of the class, we introduced still life. We used a paper octahedron to demonstrate how, based on light sources, each visible face of the octahedron was visually of a different value.  Placing the octahedron in direct sunlight, students were introduced to the concept of observing shadows and transitions in value. 

Introducing colour and brush work