Little Picasso 8: Winter Art Camp 16/17 [Day 1]

The first day of the “Little Picasso Winter Art Camp” vol (8) started with 7 little artists. After a brief introduction session, they explored with one of the art elements: line.

Lines are marks that span a distance between two points (or the path of a moving point). As an element of visual art, line is the use of various marks, outlines and even curves. Line is considered to be a moving dot.  It has an endless number of uses in the creation of art. Line can control a viewer’s eye.  It can describe edges.  It can indicate form as well as movement on top of that every children start their learnings through the line by scribbling the various surfaces after they can hold something on their hands.

The little artists drew outlines of each other in a large stretch of paper and filled the outlines with various patterns using lines with the help of a marker. This process of drawing outlines of the subject is known as contour drawing. “Contour” is a French word meaning outline. Contour drawing is a technique because it is a strong foundation for any drawing or painting; it can potentially modify a subjects’ form through variation within the lines. Its objective is to capture the life, action, or expression of the subject. This process will help the participants to increase their critical observation and help them understand not only am art but also their surroundings in the long run.

After contouring the participants were told to fill in the outlines with nothing but lines and curves. They were told to repeat the lines and shapes derived from those lines. The repetition of the lines and curves started to create awesome shapes, patterns and figures. The children started to truly enjoy this process as they could see how beautifully they had created art.

The participants were engaged in this session for a long time with complete focus and concentration. This showed that children can focus on things that they truly enjoy. Towards the end of the day the little artists came up with amazing art pieces which were truly aesthetically pleasing. The little artists came in this morning filling little nostalgic and confused about how the day would proceed but they left the workplace with joy and a sense of satisfaction as they had themselves created strong visual art pieces.

This way the first day of the “Little Picasso Winter Art Camp” volume (8) came to an end. The students learned about lines and contouring, and how they could create artworks by just repeating lines to create patterns and compiling them. They left the workplace with satisfaction and a hope for the same tomorrow.

The chief mentor of 8th Edition of Little Picasso; Winter Art Camp 2016 is Kailash K Shrestha, Visual artist and participating little artists are: Agaman Poudel, Diya Singh Maharjan, Jyoti Singh Maharjan, Mukhu Prajapati, Ruben Lama and Baivhab Man Tamrakar.

Photos and Text by: Aryapranish Silwal