This is my fourth blog post for my in-depth project. As a reminder, my project is on Indian folk art. Currently, I have been working on Warli art. This week it turned out that there was still some work left to do on my project, but they were mostly smaller details. We didn’t learn a lot this lesson, however it did take a lot of time to draw out certain parts to finish them off.
Progress:
For starters, I went over some lines in a thicker black marker to make their shape seem bolder. This makes the drawing stand out, and adds heaviness.
I colored in the center of the wheel as well. I drew triangles inside the triangles, and added a wheel on the center, to represent motion.
I drew angular designs inside the tree. You probably wouldn’t see this on normal trees, but I feel like it is an abstract representation of the designs on tree trunks.
Using the empty space above the center wheel, I drew a carpet-like shape with a swastika on it, an ancient Sanskrit symbol. Unfortunately history has ruined the actual meaning of the swastika, which really is just a symbol of prosperity.
Moving on, I colored in the people outside of the wheel. This way they would match the people on the wheel. I personally think they look like shadows, which is interesting to me.
Finally, I moved on to the border of the drawing. I drew inverse black triangles to the green triangles, filling in the gaps. I also drew green triangles on the corners, to make it look like it was alternating. Personally, the border is one of my favorite parts of this project.
1. What has been my most difficult mentoring challenge so far? Why?
I can’t point out a specific difficulty in my mentoring experience so far. Things have gone smooth for the most part, but there are a few small things that could be better. One of these is the time difference. It’s not just that we live in different time zones, but they aren’t offset by a complete hour. Her time is ahead by 12 hours and 30 minutes, rather than just 12 hours. There have been a few classes that have started a little late, but I have decided to get ready earlier to fix this.
2. What is working well? Why?
What’s working well in our lessons is the communication between me and my mentor. I have continued to ask her questions. Now I even share how I did a step to know if I could have done it better or to provide suggestions. I believe we have good communication because both of us are patient. We wait until the other is finished talking rather than interrupting in between.
3. What could be working better? How can you make sure this happens?
As previously mentioned time zones are an issue. However, another issue that has been coming up is that my mentor’s camera doesn’t capture everything. She uses two camera: one for her face and one for the canvas. However, the canvas camera doesn’t capture the whole canvas, which means sometimes her drawing goes off the screen. To solve this, we can reposition the camera. I can make sure that this is better by telling my mentor more often when the canvas goes off camera.
Conclusion:
I really enjoyed working on this project. It had it’s issues, but it was very informative. I think me and my mentor have developed a good environment together, and I can’t wait to start working on more advanced art forms.
