Tag Archives: thejamjar

Of Audi’s and art

Guest post by Adita Divecha, Karan’s mother

We’re back to Karan’s Tuesday art class at the Jam Jar.

This time, when we walked in, there were many people around. It seemed that the staff from Audi had volunteered for the day.

They wanted the children to paint cars; they had bought the small models of Audi cars and said we could dip them into the paint and roll the tyres across the paper to create painted wheel tracks.

Karan was very excited, I think because there were so many people around and they were taking photographs. He dipped the car in the paint and started making tracks on the paper. He seemed pretty excited about doing it and was pretty quick about it.

Since he doesn’t like getting paint on his fingers, I had to go wash his hands every now and then. The second time he used a paint brush but he wasn’t interested in painting cars, so he just made strokes with the brush the way he wanted to. For the third one, they gave him a sheet with an outline of the car but he didn’t want to stay in the line. He was laughing a lot and having fun.

After that, they kept large sheets of paper on the floor and had drawn a large sized Audi sports car…I think it was an R8. They asked if Karan would sit down on the floor and paint and we decided to give it a try. He was helped by one of the guys from Audi who sat with him. He painted the rear of the car dark blue and the rear shell of the car red and black and silver.

He was fine with sitting on the floor and moving his hands, as his strokes have improved.

As usual I did not take photos, and now Devina is upset because of that. The people from Audi had painted their faces and they seemed to be enjoying themselves along with the children. When we left, they gave each child one of the small car models.

Thanks to Audi and Start for the day!

Karan’s first Tuesday Workshop @thejamjar

Guest post by Adita Divecha, Karan’s mother

Note: Sorry I didn’t take any pictures; Devina already told me I should have!

Devina had arranged for Karan to join the Tuesday Workshops organized by START at the Jam Jar in Al Quoz. They have 1/1.5 hour sessions every Tuesday where children with special needs get to do some artwork.

Karan has been doing a lot of painting in school and we thought this might be something he would enjoy and hopefully get involved in.

I was a bit nervous initially; I’ve never taken him outside for painting or art before. But I drove to the Jam Jar yesterday and found it easily enough. It’s a big open space inside and there were a few people already there, sitting at the long table with thick sheets of paper in front of them.

We met with Nicola who was from START and I signed in. There were also people from Dubai One filming, although I’m not exactly sure for what. They were asking volunteers questions about their work at START I think.

The volunteers were getting the kids to dip their fingers in thick paint and copy the artwork in front of them. Karan isn’t very good at imitating yet, and he hates his fingers brushing against in any new substance, but we tried. He dipped one finger into a bowl of blue paint and had the most pained expression on his face as he did so. He then wiped his finger all over his t-shirt. Then we hurriedly put an apron on.

So I asked for a brush for him and then he was okay. He did four paintings; didn’t copy the design very well but had wonderful splotches of bright paints all over his sheets.

After an hour and a little more, he got a bit whiny so we decided to leave while he was still in a reasonably good mood.

I think he liked it … let’s see what he does next week.