The boys and girls didn’t quite understand the concept behind perspective drawing, but the students of Chennai School in T.V. Puram enjoyed colouring boxes and spending time at the Government Museum.
Around 60 students of the school took part in ‘Pannpaattu Palagani’ (Windows of Culture), a one-day workshop on art and culture, on Saturday.
Apart from a tour of the museum, they were treated to an hour-and-half session of ‘kai silambattam’ that kept them mesmerized. One of the students, M. Manikandan, said he was impressed by the fast moves of the silambattam performers.
His classmates, G. Raja, D. Udayakumar and M. Lokesh, found drawing interesting as they had never thought about how the eye sees things differently. Their drawings were always flat, they said. The students were taught the distinction between two- and three-dimension and how it could be translated onto canvas.
“We were asked to draw a dot in the centre, make boxes and draw lines emanating from that point and connect the boxes with the lines,” Manikandan said.
K. Vilvanathan, lecturer, painting department, Government College of Fine Arts, said of the 60 students who attended the workshop, at least half of them could be trained in drawing.
“They are talented. We asked them to draw what came to their mind and they were quite good. The drawings showed they were very observant and could analyse things,” he said.
The workshop, conducted by the museum every Thursday, exposes a batch of students from schools run by the Chennai Corporation to a new folk art form, teaches them painting, and provides them lunch and snacks.
“The Chief Minister has allocated Rs. 5 lakh to the museum for educational activities,” an official said.
