wonder mandal: Art projects कला प्रकल्प

Three big art projects were created by my students and me, and I am fully proud of them for the hard work the put into it.

Stage decoration 2017

The first project was creating stage decoration for our school’s annually parents gathering (“Palak Melawa”).
Few 9^th standard students lead the project. There was no theme – so the choice was completely theirs. A free choice. They planned the design of the stage banner and the painting on it – two big trees, hugged by children; they chose to cut and colour big flowers from cardboard, and hang them along the sides of the banner; and they decided to create the title “Palak Melawa” out of paper-mache balls, coloured and hanged on a wire. Additional balls were planned to be used as decoration for the sitting area.

Initial plan...

Excited and hopeful we presented the plan to the school’s management, and to our great joy, we got their approval. The slogan would be chosen by the headmaster.

We started our journey… every evening we set together and worked on the huge project we took on our shoulders: cutting newspapers, kneading paper-mache, collecting cardboards, drawing flowers and cutting them. The boys used the great opportunity they were fortunate to get – to sit in my room without being scold at – to watch movies while working.

Almost all the students in the school were called to create balls out of the paper-mache, and a week later – to decorate them.

And we continued: Ganesh, sketching and detailing the banner painting in his notebook; Shrinath, planning and colouring the balls-title on the computer; Onkar and Rohit, decorating the cardboard flowers with colours; Vishvajeet and Shriraj counting and colouring balls.

The cloth for the banner had been purchased, along with big bottles of acrylic colours. Three full days, plus some hours, had been dedicated to drawing, painting, and colouring the banner. Three Thursdays in-a-row, in which, we went up with our painting gear to the roof-terrace that provided us wide and quiet working space. We played our favourite music, and created.

Yellow, red and blue were mixed to create brown shade for the trees’ trunks. Ganesh and Sujal, with the help of Kiran, mixed green colour and water in a deep plate, dipped they hands in it, and stamped them on the banner to create impressive treetops. Then we began the colouring of the girls’ dresses and the boys’ cloths.

By the time we had to start writing, the students were exhausted… and so it turned out, that of all of us, it was me who wrote the gathering slogan… drawing clean, rounded Marathi letters: विश्व एक परिवार ‘Vishva ek parivar’ – the world is one family.