It is an
understatement to say that Aadya loves drawing. When it comes to Aadya and her penchant
for drawing, I am always reminded of a movie quote from the 90’s American movie
“Sister Act 2 - Back in the habit” which goes like “When you wake up in the morning, and you cant
think of anything but singing, then you should be a singer, girl” ….. this couldn’t
be any more truer with Aadya and her drive to draw that is uppermost in her mind as she wakes
up every morning!
What began as simple doodling has now blossomed into a creative, engaging, and sometimes all-consuming form of expression for Aadya. Initially, Aadya was stuck on drawing princesses and all their trappings, and then she moved on (phew!) to depicting her thoughts, state of mind, her wishes, or her understanding of a story or a book onto her drawing board! (quite literally! 😊) Drawing is not only Aadya’s favourite pastime or her hobby but also a form of solace on days that she is upset over something…. as she pulls out two sheets from the big pile of one-sided printed sheets (a very useful recycling method for my office waste!) and starts to draw………all is forgotten! It’s not unusual to find her suddenly disappear to her desk in the middle of watching a family movie and reappear with an image she has sketched, drawing inspiration from something she’d seen on screen just a few minutes ago, like drawing two children playing tennis as were all watching “King Richard”!
It’s not uncommon to find her immediately turn out a replica of an image pasted on a new piece of clothing that we just brought home from shopping!
So much so that
a recent visit to the planetarium and the Indira Gandhi park had us unexpectedly
and serendipitously gate crash into the Sunday meet up of an art group called “Pencil
scratchers” where Aadya found herself most at home with a paper and pencil,
rubbing shoulder to shoulder with fellow pencil artists and attempting to sketch a live model!
As Aadya
explores her artistic side more, we revisited the book “ " I gotta draw"” by
Bruce Degan that I had read to her brother almost 8 years ago! That apart, we
also got a few books that she could relate to and thanks to the wonderful library
“Kahaani box” we had a decent line up of books related to
art and love for expressing oneself through drawings. From Fancy Nancy’s
“Aspiring Artist” , where Nancy is inspired to into being an artiste
in her characteristic fancy style to “Tell
us a story Papa Chagall” by Laurence Anholt , which is a delightful
introduction to the dream-like style of painting of Marc Chagall and “Prince
with a Paintbrush” by Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan and illustrated by
Ravika Sen which is a charming read on the “Leonardo-Da-Vinci of India”-
Raja Ravi Varma!
But Aadya most
of all related to “Bea Garcia - My Life in Pictures” written
and illustrated by Deborah Zemke, an early reader series brought out by
Puffin books. We couldn’t have found a similar book, which revolves around a little
girl named Beatrice Holmes Garcia aka Bea who has a penchant for drawing and
expressing herself through pictures of everything about her life as it is and
as she wishes it to be! It was almost as if we were looking at a reflection of
our little aspiring artist as we read about how Bea navigates through her school
and social life after her best friend Yvonne moves to Australia, all expressed
through her magnificent drawings! . Read on as the teacher confiscates Bea’s
book “My life in pictures” that almost threatens to expose her quirky view of
her classmates only to have the circumspect teacher realise the power of her
pencil! So… draw on…. my aspiring little artist …..the world is your canvas! :-)