Week 4 of art class: Emotions expressed through stamping

This Sunday afternoon started with the boys happily entering the art class asking us "tell us the plan for this week! what materials have you brought?" It felt like we had to wear skates on our feet and start the class as soon as possible.

It was a zealous and lovely welcome for all of us volunteers and the children got ready to make foldable zines. The class started with all of us watching Navarasam, a music video by Thaikkudam bridge. The video showed through beautiful imagery 9 emotions that a young boy experiences in his life.

After watching the video, children reflected on emotions like love, joy, anger and grief. As emotions flowed on-screen one by one, they drew quick sketches of imagery that came to their mind on a rough paper.

Finally, when they explored the emotion of stress, they crumpled the paper with their sketches, tore it to bits and at each other before rushing to their smaller groups.

Once they folded their papers into a zine, I sensed a beautiful tug of war in the boys' mind; their hands rushed to use the stamps and colorful ink pads while their brains had to calm down to think what image to sketch.

Using just cardboard and foam paper, children quickly made stamps of emotions. The beauty of stamping was how children could reuse stamps multiple times with different colors. I also saw them sharing stamps with their peers; thanks to its re-usability.

While most children stamped what made them happy, I could see some children honestly expressing what made them sad or angry. Some picked multiple emotions and made stamps for each emotion.

Overall, we could see zines instilling a sense of experimentation in the children as they kept sketching and crafting. Some children laughed and cheered loudly; some sat calmly; some ran around to see what their peers were doing; some reflected deeply; and most emotions felt welcome, thanks to art.

As the children turn the page to an artsy new year, stay tuned to hear more Kutty Kutty Stories <3