[ Music]. Hello, and welcome to Family Sundays
Online with the Rubin Museum of Art. I'm Becky, and we are a museum of Himalayan
Art and ideas in New York City. And this fall, we're continuing our online
series of family programs. This is our second one. We're holding these programs
every first Sunday of the month. Um, and it's really great to
have folks joining us. Um, no matter how big or small the crowd is, we're just so thrilled
to be making art together online. Um, so today's workshop, we're going to start by looking
at a piece from our collection, and then I'll take any
questions you have, um, through our chat function. And then we're gonna work with
an amazing teaching artist to actually make some art inspired by the art that we're looking at together.
This is the Hindu deity Ganesh. And so the first thing that
people usually notice about Ganesh is that he has a body of a person of a human and a head of an elephant. So that's something a
little bit different, right? So I'm going to tell
the story of why he has an elephant head. He's actually the son of Shiva, who is the Hindu god of destruction and transformation, very powerful and Parvati. And Ganesh himself is actually
known as the removal of obstacles or challenges. So a person can ask Ganesh
for a blessing before a really important event in
their life or something that's challenging. That's going to be happening.
They can ask for help from Ganesh. And there's a lot of stories about how
Ganesh came to have his elephant head, but one really popular story and
common story says that Parvati, his mother created him out of dirt to protect her while Shiva was
away. So Shiva was gone, but then Shiva came home and
Ganesh had never met Shiva. He didn't know his father and he didn't
want to let him in because he didn't know who Shiva was. So Shiva got really angry because he
just wanted to come home and he got so angry and he was so surprised
that he actually cut off Ganesh's head. So then he realized what he'd done. And he was so panicked
and surprised and he just, he didn't know what to do. So he
brought Ganesh back to life and he had to give him a head. So he ended up just giving him
an elephant head and it turns out that was actually a pretty good
move on the part of Shiva because Ganesh's new really big ears
have been a huge help to him. They allow him to hear all of the
needs of the people asking for his help for his blessings. And
he brings good luck to people. He helps destroy obstacles
that are in the way of people achieving goals. And it's also this well known fact, not so much a secret that
he really loves sweets and candy. Um, so before we start talking
about the art that you can make, um, based on this, this art piece, I want to talk a little
bit about the statue. So this is actually a really big statue, and right now it's in the lobby of our
museum. So if you go to the museum, you can actually see it in person. And you might notice that
Ganesh also has multiple arms. Sometimes he has four arms. Sometimes he has eight arms and
he's holding a lot of things, right? So some of the things that
he'll hold - you remember, I mentioned he had a really big love of
sweets - so sometimes we'll be holding a sweet called laddu and
they're kind of round. Sometimes they'll be placed at his feet, but those are something that
you can usually find with him. And sometimes he'll be holding
a rope to help pull people up closer to, to godliness. Um, and then sometimes he'll be holding
an ax and he is holding an ax in this image, in the statue
and that's to help, um, like cut through being
attached, to really connected, to things and desires. So it's a really great big
statue and it's so wonderful to be able to visit it. I'm gonna bring on our
teaching artists for the day. Her name is Netanel,
and she is so amazing. Thank you so much for being here with us. I'm going to hand it over to you to
talk a little bit about how we can be inspired, um, to make
art from looking at, um, this, this beautiful art piece.
Um, so thank you so much. Great. Thank you so much
back here. Hello, everyone. I'm really happy to be here today.
Um, I hope you're safe and well, and I wanted to start by
saying that I'm really, I'm really just happy to be back in
the family Sunday program online, and I can't wait to see
familiar faces and everybody, when we get back into
the education center. So I wanted to quickly speak a
little bit more, um, about, um, and expand what Becky was saying. And then we'll get started with
our art project for the day. So the project we're going to be
making is called glorious Ganesh and today we'll be getting
to make a flip book together. So a traditional flip book is a
booklet that has many images that change from one page to the next.
And I actually have one that I made, um, that I could show you. Um, so this one is pretty different from
what we're going to be making today, but just to show you how images
can change from one page to the next Over time, it's pretty tricky sometimes to
get them to actually flip it. So, um, many of the most powerful deities in our
museum collection are hybrid creatures. So an example that Becky
just spoke about is Ganesh, a human and elephant hybrid.
And we also have Naga, a human like figure with snakes that
come out of its head and Garuda, a bird and human hybrid. Um, so today what we're going to be doing
is creating our own hybrid creatures and there can be endless
combinations and powers, and the only limit is your imagination. So what I want you to think about
is some of your favorite animals, and I want you to focus on the
characteristics that define each animal. So a camel, for example,
its hump is defined, um, or a frog it's fingers aren't defined, um, even an alligator's head, um, its face is kind of like pointed
in a triangular direction. Um, and so with that, I want you to move over to our
art making project and let's get started. Okay. So for today, the materials, we will be needing our paper, so about two to three, even four sheets of paper, and we want them to all
be the same size. Um, so take a moment to grab
the materials that you need. I'll be going over the rest
of the materials. So paper, we have a ruler, some scissors, glue. Glue works really well or a stapler, or if you have needle and thread,
that would be great as well. And then a pencil and some markers, any markers
that you have work really well. Um, and then we would
also be able to use color pencils. And if you don't have pencils, you can replace them with markers, um, or just pencils if you have. And so with that, let's get started. So the first thing you want to do
is grab your sheets of paper and we can fold them and crease them lightly Just to hold it down. And then if you don't have a stapler glue works really well. So I'm going to glue mine
and I will also staple it. So it helps if you start
with the back and then, you can take another sheet of
paper and then add more glue and then I will also staple it. So you could staple it once at the top, once in the center, and then once at the bottom, and now we've created
our spine of the book. And so then what we can do
is hold each page to get to the back of the book. And now once we're at the back of the
book where you will want to take our ruler and we want to measure and equally separate, um, the booklet and what we want
to do is grab our pencil and make three markings. And then it would be really helpful
to do that as well on the other side. And I'm going to actually
do this with a marker, so you can see my lines, but
you should do it with a pencil. And then I'm also going to do it
on the other side so I can connect my horizontal lines. And then what you can do, Is take a pencil and connect the lines, just like this. And the next step is to grab
scissors and flip your book over and then cut along
the lines that you made. Okay. I would cut all the way to the end And then cut again. Okay. So now you'll see that
you have created your flip book and the next step is to
open to your last page. And I want you to think about the animal
that you're going to be drawing on this page, and we want to draw the
head and the neck on the top flap, and then you want to drop
the, the hips, right? And the, and the belly and the center of
the animal in the middle flat. And in the bottom, you can do the
legs or the tail of your animal. So what really helps is to
actually draw guidelines and the top where you have, you want to
connect your neck to your body. Um, you can make a guidelines.
So I will make mine, um, kind of this, this wide and
separated. And then at the bottom, I might make them a little bit smaller. And then what you can do is turn over your top flap. And then the line that you
created at the bottom can be added to the top. So then you have your
guideline for the next page, and then you can also do that for the center. So bring in your middle flap, and then there we go. It can be
kind of tricky. Yeah. And so Hopefully now you'll have
guidelines on every one of your flaps. Okay. So now what you want to do is start
thinking about the animals that we would like to add, um, and draw.
So I think to the first one, I am going to draw a seahorse and then I'll flip to the next page And on this page, I am
going to draw an elephant. An elephant on this page. And then on this page, I'll draw a snake. What a, funky snake. And then I'm the last page
I'll go ahead and draw a frog. And then what you want to do is color each animal, and you can use your
markers or colored pencils, or even pastels if you have
them and color in each animal on each page. And then you can also
add a background to each animal. So maybe you have a koala that you're
drawing and you want it to be riding a bicycle or holding a bag, um, or maybe it has a friend with it.
So another animal on the side. Um, so then that way you can just
color the background, um, and even later on make a cover
for your book if you'd like. So for now, um, unless we have any questions we
can get started with covering [ music]. So I hope that you can
also join us next month on November 1st, the first
Sunday of the month. Um, and we'll be doing a workshop
called Flying Diyas at 1:00 PM on Zoom and our website for
that will be going live soon. We'll be sending out an email
and also posting on social media, um, about how to register for
that in the coming weeks. Um, and we're just really excited
for our next Family Sunday. We hope to see you in person soon.
