Integrated Art Workshop for Children

Dr Abe V Rotor (Organizer and Instructor)
Second Session, 3 to 5 PM Sunday (January 29, 2017) San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

 

Children gather at Dr Rotor’s residence to watch him paint, play the violin and write for the Bannawag magazine – until a workshop for them was organized. Integrated art: visual, music and literature.  Learning is applied, hands-on, on-the spot, and spontaneous.  It is something to complement learning at school, and give children  alternative to too much computer games, TV and loafing.  Creativity is talent of every one.  It’s just there waiting to be tapped, otherwise wasted.  Creativity balances logic or reasoning. It unburdens worries and cares of daily living, and brightens outlook in life.  It’s time to lead the children to a less trodden path of life – happy, loving, courageous, and free.

 (Workshop participants display their first painting with their instructor.   

Background mural (10 ft x 30 ft) by Dr Rotor.

What better activity  to offer kids on a Sunday afternoon,

but an on-the-spot painting session under the trees,

their shadow intermingling with them and their work,

urging them to just-do-it, you-can-do-it, and let-it-go ,

the creativity through the inner eye, from the inner self;

befriend “The Little Prince” when in doubt, when bored,

and discover you are not alone in this world.   

Looking for a subject to paint?  To compose a simple verse? To hum an original melody? Just close your eyes and view the world in imagery – not in cartoons, not in shopping malls, not in movies and TV shows. Train the right brain to bridge the left brain.  There’s too much use of the left brain in school, at home, on the street, or even in serious thoughts. Switch it to the right brain, the seat of creativity. The essence of rationality is the proper balance and use of the right and left brain.  

Drawing and painting may need different materials, but the principles involved are the same: primary colors (red, yellow, blue) produce secondary colors, secondary colors produce tertiary colors, ad infinitum.  And you don’t only create a full rainbow but all the colors, shades and hues of objects and views above and below it.

 

 (Group work is team work, but to each his or her own, indeed competition and cooperation in action.) Photos taken by the author, at his residence, January 29 2017