BLACK AND WHITE

By UDDALAK BANERJEE

BLACK AND WHITE 2014

A story dedicated to my former Arts teacher

BLACK AND WHITE

In my childhood I used to waste a lot of time doing nothing. My mother once told me to go and join the new art coaching centre, a start-up created by our neighbour Mr P Chatterjee. Mr P Chatterjee was a lawyer by profession but had a good hand in painting. After prolonged insistence I agreed to go to this coaching .I was not really interested to learn and planned to drop the coaching after some classes. The first day I went there I found hardly 10 people sitting there. I knew it was a start-up and given that his profession was not that of a pure artist I even harnessed doubt of his competencies as a teacher.

The very first day he gave me a lot of assignments given my lack of interest to learn. He told us to hold the HB pencil straight and towards the lower half of the pencil while drawing and not towards the lead part. I used to find his instructions funny and often used to laugh at them. In the second class when I actually painted some pictures by my own and took them to him, he appreciated my work and said that I could really become a good painter if I put in sufficient amount of time and effort. Mr P Chatterjee was more of a social recluse and never really talked too much .He used to give us assignments mainly to draw pictures of pots , houses , trees , factories , birds , camels , kites , ball , bat , ground , moon , sun , mountains etc. In the third class, I was getting impatient and asked him to begin classes on advanced oil painting, especially the ones that get sold in art galleries. I felt I had already drawn enough to know about these elementary things. He smiled but did not say anything. After a few more classes some of my friends also felt some reason in my words and they too started to come up with stories of some of their friends who were learning oil paintings. During the next class, I ended up publically quoting one of this stories in front of everyone to him. He still did not react adversely and said the time has not yet come for that and when the time will come he will teach us.

During that time there was a painting competition organised in our locality and all my friends and their friends took part. We were not happy with our preparation as we felt it is impossible to fight someone who knows oil painting in an open canvas competition where it is open to everyone to use any colour or style he or she is comfortable with. Our neighbour P Chatterjee was made one of the judges. On the last day before competition he called us and even knowing that we dont think highly of him, he said while drawing anything dont think of any other thing but the object you are drawing. A pencil has numerous shades it can produce so many shades of colours that a paint cant produce .If you can visualise distinctly what u want to draw you will always be able to draw that accurately.

BLACK AND WHITE 2014

On the day of the competition, all of us were there on the club ground awaiting the judges and final declaration of the rules. When the judges assembled on the ground, Mr Chatterjee told the judges that there should be only one sheet used for painting . All the other judges objected saying we have adequate papers, just in case one gets spoiled the other should be allowed to be used. Hearing their argument Mr Chatterjee said, Ok so be it! But people whom I had coached should be using only one sheet . We were literally gutted and was constantly in our minds abusing him with all sorts of expletives. The painting competitions rules were same as discussed before and duration was of one hour .The day was a bit cloudy and wind was there. The boys who were my friends friend who used to practice oil painting were literally rejoicing at the beginning, feeling that the same effect and glamour in painting cannot be brought about by people who use just pencil and rubber. The more they smiled, the more we burned in anger and frustration. But once the competition started the pendulum swung. IT takes a lot of time for paint to stick to paper. Now since they were using multiple sheets they thought first lets make a sketch in one of the sheets and then we will draw it afresh in another and then paint in it. Now there is a subtle difference in oil painting and pencil drawings. In oil painting subtle features are brought through layers of paint and not by pencil scriptures. So it takes a lot of time. Now following the afore-mentioned strategy they started to draw and soon ran out of time. The atmosphere was cloudy and time limited. They ended up drawing and then redrawing the picture but while applying the paint the finer aspects were completely missing. And since wind was strong it was rolling the soft paint onto different areas of the picture creating an unwanted melange. On the other hand, we knew only one art so painted our objects and the entire time we did fine tuning on the one picture trying to put exact shades that we thought was apt. The competition ended and results were declared all three toppers came from our coaching. We were elated and I personally said sorry to Mr Chatterjee for my ignorance and dis belief in his capabilities. He smiled and taught me which finally helped me later to win the poster making competition at XLRI organised by C.A.S.H (Committee against Sexual Harassment).The award was presented by Mr P K Padhi here at XLRI in one of the social gatherings. I felt elated and remembered Mr Chatterjee at that time, for it was his guidance , selfless mid wife leadership full of care and nourishment that finally got me this award and recognition

THE END