Category Art

What are various craft items?

Getting Crafty

To do all the crafts, you will need lots of materials. Some things you will need for only one project. But other things you will use again and again.

It is a good idea to collect the materials and keep them in a large cardboard box. Then you will have the materials you need to work with.

Where will you find your materials? You may have to buy some at a craft shop. But you can start your collecting at home and outside. Remember to get permission before you take something for your collection. And be careful when handling sharp objects.

Craft materials to collect

• Rubber bands • tracing paper • bowls of different sizes • cardboard • clear tape • crayons • glue • flowers • leaves • food colouring • paper and card in different colours and weights • magazines • felt-tipped pens • masking tape • newspaper • open-weave canvas • pencils • pieces of cloth • a ruler • scissors • streamers • string • tissue paper • greaseproof paper • embroidery hoop • embroidery needle • embroidery thread.

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How did Crafts work begin?

Most crafts are activities that have been done for a very long time. Some crafts developed in different parts of the world at the same time. For example, people in different parts of the world carved designs onto their wooden boats. Hundreds of years ago, a group of people called the Maori were skilled woodcarvers as well as good sailors. They sailed from islands in northeast Polynesia to what is now New Zealand in canoes decorated with beautiful woodcarvings.

Thousands of miles away, in northern Europe, Viking sailors decorated the prow, or front, of their ships with woodcarvings called figureheads. The tradition of figureheads continued in Western Europe, North America, and South America as long as large wooden ships sailed the seas.

Other crafts were important in different places. One such craft is kite-making. Almost two thousand years ago, Chinese generals used paper kites to signal their troops in battle.

Today, Japanese paint warriors on their kites and wage “war” in the air at kite festivals. They also celebrate Boys’ Day on May 5 by flying kite-like windsocks. These paper flags are shaped and painted like carp – fish that stand for strength, courage, and determination in Japan.

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What is trompe l’oeil in art?

When it comes to art, what you see is not always what you get. An art technique known as trompe l’oeil uses realistic imagery to create an optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions.

Trompe l’oeil was widely popular during the Renaissance, the technique was often employed to murals and frescoes on church ceilings. The fresco painting on the ceiling of the Church of Saint Ignazio in Rome, created by Andrea Pozzo during 1691-1694, is one classic example. A semi-circular roof is transformed into a fantastic picture of the heavens, in which Saint Ignatius ascends into paradise.

The term trompe l’oeil (meaning trick of the eye in French) was first used by artist Louis-Leopold Boilly as a title of his painting in Paris in 1800. It later gained currency throughout Europe. The technique was usually used to create the impression of a bigger space.

Artists Vittorio Carpaccio and Jacopo de Barbari took the technique further. They added small trompe l’oeil details to their paintings such as a curtain that appears to partly conceal the painting, or a person might appear to be climbing out of the painting altogether.

Putting things in perspective

A lesser-known art technique known as anamorphosis, is an offshoot of the trompe l’oeil technique. In anamorphosis, a deformed image appears in its true shape when viewed in an unconventional way. There are two types of anamorphosis images:

** Oblique – These images need to be viewed from a position that is very far from the usual positions from where we normally expect images to be looked at

** Catoptric – The image must be seen reflected in a distorting mirror. The Hungarian artist István Orosz has produced some beautiful examples of these

How does it work?

We tend to believe something is real if we see it in front of us. However, seeing is not a direct perception of reality. What we see is the result of our brains constantly interpreting and giving structure to the raw visual input from our eyes. Artists use this knowledge to create optical illusions in the tromp l’oeil paintings.

 

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Born into an aristocratic family from Travancore in the mid-19th Century, who is known for his works depicting Hindu mythology using European styles?

Raja Ravi Varma was a celebrated Indian painter and artist. He is considered among the greatest painters in the history of Indian art. His works are one of the best examples of the fusion of European academic art with a purely Indian sensibility and iconography. Additionally, he was notable for making affordable lithographs of his paintings available to the public, which greatly enhanced his reach and influence as a painter and public figure. His lithographs increased the involvement of common people with fine arts and defined artistic tastes among common people. Furthermore, his religious depictions of Hindu deities and works from Indian epic poetry and Puranas have received profound acclaim.

Varma was patronised by Ayilyam Thirunal, the next Maharaja of Travancore and began formal training thereafter. He learned the basics of painting in Madurai. Later, he was trained in water painting by Rama Swami Naidu and in oil painting by Dutch portraitist Theodor Jenson.

The British administrator Edgar Thurston was significant in promoting the careers of Varma and his brother. Varma received widespread acclaim after he won an award for an exhibition of his paintings at Vienna in 1873. Varma’s paintings were also sent to the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 and he was awarded three gold medals.[8] He travelled throughout India in search of subjects. He often modelled Hindu Goddesses or Indian women, whom he considered beautiful. Ravi Varma is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from the story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and Nala and Damayanti, from the Mahabharata. Ravi Varma’s representation of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian imagination of the epics. He is often criticized for being too showy and sentimental in his style but his work remains very popular in India. Many of his fabulous paintings are housed at Laxmi Vilas Palace, Vadodara.

 

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Elected the first Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1955, who is known for his iconic folk style paintings with flat forms and bold outlines?

Jamini Roy was an Indian painter. He was honoured with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1955. He was one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, whose artistic originality and contribution to the emergence of art in India remains questionable.

Jamini Roy was born in the year 1887 at Beliatore village in the Bankura district of West Bengal. Roy was born into an affluent family of land-owners. His father, Ramataran Roy, resigned from his government services to pursue his interest in art. In the year 1903, when he was only 16 years old, Jamini Roy left his village and made it all the way to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to enroll himself at the Government College of Art. There, he received education under Abanindranath Tagore, famous for his valuable contribution in the field of modern art. Tagore was the vice principal of the college and trained Roy as per the prevailing academic tradition. Roy finished his education in 1908 and was given a Diploma in Fine Arts. Roy was true to the art that he learned and started painting in accordance with the Western classical style. But he straightaway realized that his heart belonged to some other form of art. 

Jamini Roy’s paintings that belong to the early 1920’s reflect the influences of the Bengal School of art. Initially, he came up with some excellent paintings that marked his entry into the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits. Later in his career, several of his many paintings were based on the everyday life of rural Bengal. Then, there were numerous ones revolving around religious themes like Ramayana, Radha-Krishna, Jesus Christ, etc. Jamini Roy also painted scenes from the lives of the aboriginals called Santhals. Throughout his works, his brush strokes were largely bold and sweeping. Around mid-1930s, Jamini Roy moved away from the conventional practice of painting on canvases and started painting on materials like cloth, mats and even wood coated with lime. He also started experimenting with natural colors and pigments derived from mud, chalk powder and flowers instead of European paints.

 

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Nephew of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was instrumental in setting up the Indian Society of Oriental Art?

The Victoria Memorial Hall is proud to present this major exhibition of paintings of the great master Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), the foundational figure of the Bengal school of Art, and widely hailed as the ‘Father of Modern Indian Art’. Curated by Professor Ratan Parimoo, the Director of Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum of Indology and N. C. Mehta Gallery, Ahmedabad, and a leading expert of Tagore paintings, this exhibition – put together painstakingly from the combined collections of the Victoria Memorial Hall and Rabindra Bharati society – includes representative samples from Abanindranath’s entire oeuvre, showcasing not only iconic works like Bharatmata and The Passing of Shah Jahan, but also works from his celebrated series of Krishna Lila, the Mangal Kavyas, The Arabian Nights, and his playful takes on Masks. Many of the works included in this exhibition will be on view to the public for the first time.

Abanindranath Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Calcutta, British India, to Gunendranath Tagore and Saudamini Tagore. His grandfather was Girindranath Tagore, the second son of “Prince” Dwarkanath Tagore. He was a member of the distinguished Tagore family, and a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother, Gaganendranath Tagore, were also artists.

Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit College, Kolkata in the 1880s.

In 1890, around the age of twenty years, Abanindranath attended the Calcutta School of Art where he learnt to use pastels from O. Ghilardi, and oil painting from C. Palmer, European painters who taught in that institution.

In 1889, he married Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier’s College, which he attended for about a year and a half.

He had a sister, Sunayani Devi.

 

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