Skip to content

Art Groups

The flow of water moving along the river, the curving lines of gliding birds, patterns in rocks - Maryhill art group

Freedom to have fun with ink and varied brushes – Maryhill Art Group

Maryhill art group marks 1-2 www.drawingandpaintingstudio from Drawing and Painting Studio on Vimeo. Maryhill art group marks 4-2 www.drawingandpaintingstudio from Drawing and Painting Studio on Vimeo.

Relaxing, making some marks, meditating

Relaxing, making some marks, meditating

We have been helping some folk to find calm and relaxation by providing a peaceful space where we can combine some meditation time, mark making, and notice our senses and environment. In this session we meditated together, relaxed our breathing, listened to some poetry and… Read More »Relaxing, making some marks, meditating

Imagining passing clouds and rugged mountain ranges - Maryhill art group

Imagining passing clouds and rugged mountain ranges – Maryhill art group

After listening to some inspiring poetry about clouds and mountains, including Hanshan’s about a path through mountain scree and boulders, we made some loose drawings of hill ridges and wispy floating clouds. Everyone’s work was different – capturing the feel of the elements and mystery… Read More »Imagining passing clouds and rugged mountain ranges – Maryhill art group

Ruchill children drawing stones, shells, a sea urchin and an olephaunt!

Ruchill children drawing stones, shells, a sea urchin and an olephaunt!

The North United Communities after school group (Primary years 5 to 7) played around with acrylic inks and different brushes and twigs, working from a selection of natural objects like stones and shells. One of the boys was more into drawing a Tolkienesque olephaunt which… Read More »Ruchill children drawing stones, shells, a sea urchin and an olephaunt!

Exploring the characters for Brightness - Koumyou - at Zen Brush Heart

Exploring the characters for Brightness – Koumyou – at Zen Brush Heart

Some fluid markmaking with the Japanese fude brushes and sumi ink was a nice relaxed way to start the group, before working with the characters 春 Haru – Spring – and 光明 Koumyou – Brightness. We had fun trying out the expressive shapes of the… Read More »Exploring the characters for Brightness – Koumyou – at Zen Brush Heart

Tree drawings by Margaret Kerr and Blair Thomson

Preparing for a drawing trees day in June

We are preparing for a summery day of drawing trees in the countryside outside Glasgow near Lenzie with Margaret Kerr. The day will be on the 2nd of June. It will be nice to be outside and engage with the trees and nature through our… Read More »Preparing for a drawing trees day in June

Shodo practice

Preparation for Zen Heart Brush

We will try working from the old visual pictgrams, first curved into shell and bone, for kou (光) and myou (明). Koumyou means radiant light, which combines well with our other character Spring (春)! We will look at the tensho as well as kaisho styles… Read More »Preparation for Zen Heart Brush

Shodo practice

Nichi and nenbutsu at Zen Heart Brush

We worked on some kanji characters including nichi/hi (日) and nenbustsu (念仏) as well as ei (永) – eternal which is always a helpful character for practicing the eight strokes (永字八法) of shodo calligraphy used in China and Japan. Some flowing markmaking helped us to loosen… Read More »Nichi and nenbutsu at Zen Heart Brush

Calligraphy day at Wiston Lodge

Sansui – Mountains and Water calligraphy at Wiston Lodge

On February 17th we led a calligraphy and mindfulness day at Wiston Lodge with the friendly and enthusiastic members of the Border Collie Sangha. The setting and light was beautiful with lodge sitting next to Tinto hill south of Lanark, with ice and snow melt… Read More »Sansui – Mountains and Water calligraphy at Wiston Lodge

Zen Heart Brush

Preparation for Zen Heart Brush calligraphy group

Laying out various materials for the Shodo Japanese calligraphy class on Saturday, such as shitajiki (felt mats), bunchin (paper weights), fude brushes, suzuri (ink wells), fudeoki (brush rests) and washi paper. The pavements are still snowy in Glasgow, so we recommend wearing boots and warm… Read More »Preparation for Zen Heart Brush calligraphy group