Freedom in open spaces and big marks! Continuing from last session’s rocky theme of rocks under the earth in Glasgow, we took this into wider dimensions with more spacious scenes of sea, islands, birds. This was influenced also by the rock and raked gravel dry… Read More »Expansive vistas, soaring gannets, flying marks
Inspired by the rocks under our feet in Glasgow, from the carboniferous to the metamorphic hundreds of millions of years ago. We drew and doodled from our rock collection as well as from our imagination, thinking about lava rising up through the sea to create… Read More »Lava rising from patterns of earth and rock
The primary school group on Saturday at North United Communities in Maryhill Hub tried Japanese calligraphy for the first time and had lots of fun! To begin with we did some short meditation together, just grounding and breathing, settling, and then touching the materials which… Read More »Spring experiments and lots of tensho!
Secondary school young people at the Friday night North United Communities group embraced Japanese writing and Shodo calligraphy. The group had some meditative time first to feel the textures and weight of the materials, such as the types of fude brushes, suzuri ink well and… Read More »Clouds and heart-mind at Maryhill Hub
At our first Sasakawa Foundation sponsored event in Ruchill, local children and staff tried out Japanese calligraphy for the first time, using traditional materials such as fude brushes and sumi ink to write some Chinese kanji characters. We explored a natural theme of light and… Read More »Shodo calligraphy at Ruchill Community Centre
We started off sketching the main shapes of the composition – of the Clyde river and Hydro, Armadillo and Tall Ship, then added the great Glasgow icon of the Duke of Wellington with his stunning traffic cone hat ? Next the Squinty bridge, Finnieston Crane,… Read More »Sights of Glasgow painted at NUC Breakfast Club
In January Blair visited Japan as part of a project kindly funded by the GB Sasakawa Foundation. He had an exciting packed schedule learning about various Shodo calligraphy styles of Japanese calligraphy with Shodo masters in Tokyo, and investigating mindful meditation practices with different teachers… Read More »Winter clarity and creative exploration in Japan
After some relaxing doodles of love hearts to celebrate the group being on Valentines day, with some joyful Ryokan poetry, we picked up the cityscape-cosmos theme again with some smaller doodles first then prepared for a large piece. One of the group brought in an… Read More »Love is in the air, with satellites whizzing by the stars
The marvelous huge cast of Dippy (cast in the early 20th C), the famous Diplodocus dinosaur of late Jurassic period, 155 to 145 million years ago, has strolled into Glasgow and is gracefully standing in the central space of the Kelvingrove gallery. It is a super scene… Read More »Dippy drops into Kelvingrove museum and art gallery
‘Art is magic’ ‘Art is explosion’ Two quotes by the Japanese 20th Century sculptor and painter Okamoto Taro. His large sun and moon heads inspired us to develop some drawings based on the heavens and its deep connection to us in the city environment. We… Read More »Exploring the cosmos, with a slice of watermelon ?
You must be logged in to post a comment.