Riyaaz – April 2021

Riyaaz

April : 2021 

The inaugural month saw our Riyaazees taking it slow and steady into the course as they worked on some basic assignments under the supervision of our core faculty. Encouraged to sit with basic shapes for hours, more than once and in different configurations, they figured some questions they shall be responding to for the time to come. Some basic portraiture and still-life were also covered along with note-making about what different mediums mean to each of them.

These tasks were motivated with the idea of helping the students feel the world, both within and around them. Irrespective of the work they do with us, and later, as illustrators, the one constant they will be with is themselves, their respective I’s; it was with the idea to facilitate the unveiling of this ‘I’ that the assignments were planned.

This ‘I’ is always, consciously or otherwise, engaged in a conversation with tradition(s)—it can and does mean different things to different people— and responds to it in what are usually recognized as the wafts of subjectivity emanating from an artist. Prof. Indrapramit Roy’s two-part lecture on the children’s books illustration in Bengal was one of the several lectures that our students will get to attend and learn of the various traditions which must lurk in each of them albeit in different manifestations. With Ms. Priya Kuriyan, one of the visiting faculties at Riyaaz, they got a chance to get a glimpse of the hits and misses that the road to becoming an esteemed artist is strewn with. She walked our students through the process of two of her works thus underlining the importance of finding just the right balance between fact-based research and the story which tugs at one’s heartstrings while working on a project.