Monday, July 23, 2012

Peeking through the glass-holding hands with Indian folk arts

That was a Sunday afternoon. A summer afternoon. Those long afternoons of India when you want to stay inside and don't even want to peek through the glass window. On one such Sunday afternoon, I, A and J sat together and made friends with a new kind of activity called - glass painting. When I was a child I painted on glasses but using acrylic colours, glass paints were not that easily available at that time in India. So the effects were different. Thanks to my mom that I always had a stock of acrylic colours along with crayon, sketch pens or water colours to dabble them on fabric, glass, empty tins, egg cartons, stones and on anything and everything available around or outside of the house. Colours and their different textures attracted me always. I was curious to see how does the readily available Camlin glass paints (non fuss paints available in plastic tubes) could be used on glasses. How different the effect will be from acrylic paints? I had many emptied pickle/pasta sauce glass and plastic jars. I washed them and dried them. Also I was very much impressed by the folk-art craft works, done by artsy craftsy mom, specially the gond, alpona, and the warli art forms. I was excited to do and share all these with J and A. So our Sunday afternoon started with the mission of combining colours, art forms and glass as canvas. How did it go? See it for yourself!


 1. Trying it out with - Trial and error. Painting for the first time on a bottle surface!

 

 2. Playing with colours and patterns, also optimising the hold on the painted glass jars.


3. Together, they talked, discussed and found out way to hold the jars while painting them.


4. Can Warli men be created on a glass bottle? The struggle...


5. Peek-a-boo through a painted glass - alpona and gond...


6. Warli men are dancing!


 7. The creation and the inspiration...


8. All four of the personalised glasses with no labels and new make-overs, standing together holding their hands (invisible for many)

 

And I must say, this became one of the memorable summer Sundays for me! 

Glass painting - A perfect, non fussy way  to bond with a child for a busy parents, older sibling, uncles and aunts or grand parents. 

2 comments:

  1. Creating this project with the kids is a fun thing to do. You can recycle old glass containers while bonding with the kid.

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  2. When I was a kid, I could not sleep my summer afternoons . I used to take my half-chewed crayons from my pencil pox and draw my heart into the walls, there were a lot of aeroplanes and some of them even dropped bombs. For some weird reason I had a huge antipathy for Japan, so when ever mom would ask me, ' Oi ki korchis' . I would proudly reply that I am bombing Japan. After I grew up, I drew a lot, some good, some better but the only drawings I really missed were the once which I drew from my heart on a undulating cemented wall.

    Its so awesome that your kid gets to do with you and if you preserve them may be some day she will she retrospect these days and feel happy about it in a certain way.

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