Blog post by Eva
We talked about our activity as the day got closer. Chetna will do the read aloud of the book “The cat and the bird”, inspired from Paul Klee’s painting “Cat and bird”. I would lead the art activity that follows, after saying a few words about his life and work, in order to bring the children into his world. They should easily get swept into the activity, as they would work with bright colours laid out in abstract patches. We didn’t go through the trouble of planning everything minutely as we felt it is only fair that it evolves spontaneously.
The day is here and two hours before 5 o’clock I feel a bit nervous, but Chetna assures me that it will all be fine , and even Suhani will join us in our play. As the room is still empty at a quarter past five, we decide that we should gather all bookworms present in the library and work on a collaborative drawing that will go onto the board behind the front desk, the monthly reminder of what a joy it is to read.
A photographer for the Herlad shows up to record our event, as they have slotted space for us, regardless of our turn-up of participants. The book is read aloud sweetly, by mother to daughter, as I start the outline for our collaborative drawing, on the photographer’s request. I stick together two sheets of chart-paper and I draw lines with a pencil. In my imagination the lines depicted fields that spread for miles, and the sun setting in the distance, on the horizon. After having had enough of the pencil, I pick up green coloured oil pastels and I start bringing to life the image in my mind. As the the photographer decides he got what he came for and leaves, everyone else, one by one, joins in and starts filling a patch, with that great enthusiasm that comes along with adding raw colour to a blank piece of paper.
A couple of patches in, we are all deeply immersed in the flamboyance of colours and we persevere further, constantly reminding ourselves that it is up to us, and only us, to finish what we started.
“What rules are we following? What colour goes where? What should be used here?”.
You decide! Not all of us knew the magic of oil pastels and their therapeutic effect!
“I know we said plain patches, but what if I draw a bird in this one? That patch that Niju just filled in looks like it could be a fish! We have a bird, so what else are we missing here?”. “The cat!”, Suhani rescues me from my wanderings.
Book-lenders come give us a hand at filling-in the patches, as we approach the end.
Where is that photographer now, now that our workshop is done and we contemplate the end result, amazed that we could pull it off ?!
All of us grew through our colouring, and we were all reminded what great energy comes from team work!
