Curving and straight lines and cloudy skies over the open Clyde riverscape

1 August 2018

There happened to be a maker’s event on at the Riverside museum so it was pretty busy, but soon after we started drawing at the river side of the building, next to the Tall Ship, we became engrossed in the sketching. Our warm up doodles and markmaking was inspired by the triangles and curves of the building and nautical shapes of the ship.

The Tall Ship with its interconnecting rope rigging and bow pointing upriver towards the science centre and armadillo gave us a lot to draw, and some of us tackled the unconventional curving roof lines of the building which is more tricky than it looks to draw, but interesting with the glass below reflecting the ship.

Surprisingly the rain mainly stayed off so we all worked outside, but there are a lot of things to try sketching from inside the building such as beautiful old trams and vehicles, will be good to make another visit here..

Category: Art Groups Tags: Drawing Groups

Drawing quirky rooftops, arches and gulls at Kelvingrove

1 August 2018

Just outside the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum we had a couple of hours of relaxing sketching. After a bit of warm up doodling and taking a line for a walk, we used pencils and pens to work from the grand building with its abundance of architecture details and styles.

It was great to just sit together as a group and work on our drawings, not worrying about the outcome but looking at parts of the building we hadn’t looked at before (in many years of passing by!) such as the gothic and almost surreal array of mini rooftops, pillars, windows, very inspiring so we’ll definitely want to go back.

Some lively Canadian visitors from Toronto joined us and worked with watercolour and some bold graphic style, was nice to see everyone enjoy the afternoon.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Drawing Groups

Playing with paint – leaves, handprints and a joyful T-rex

11 July 2018

At the NUC summer group with children, we worked on a summer environmental theme, exploring painting and using different materials for mark making including brushes, rollers and hand prints.

The children also enjoyed painting on to the leaves directly, and had ideas for rainbows, butterflies. There was also some Jackson Pollock like mark making which left some striking pieces, as well as probably more paint on the floor!

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, NUC, Young people's art

Vibrant collage and crafty bold shapes

5 July 2018

This week we picked up on the shapes of the garden courtyard, buildings and summer foliage that we had explored with A4 drawings the week before.

We used collage and some simple craft cutting and sticking this time, combined with the lovely transparent inks, with pastels, to explore these rhythms of shapes.

This was much more free than the week before with enough time to experiment with composition and layout and get a feel for the possibilities of the different art materials.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, Maryhill Art Group

Painting brave diamonds at Zen Heart Brush

2 July 2018

On a hot Monday evening we enjoyed some Shodo calligraphy in the refreshingly cool Kagyu Samye Dzong building.

We wrote or painted (in Japanese the verb kaku means both to write, draw, paint) the word Kongo 金剛 which means literally metal/ gold and brave/ sturdy. Together this can mean diamond, or vajra, indestructible truth, or thunderbold!

We looked at the older bone carvings and tensho styles and their meanings, before trying these and the kaisho style. We also explored some of the basic calligraphy strokes in these characters.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Shodo calligraphy

Summer drawings from the courtyard

28 June 2018

It was a bright day in the Maryhill Hub, and beautiful looking out the large windows to the garden courtyard and plants and vegetables growing there.

We started with some doodly drawings based on the shapes in the courtyard, such as the raised beds, organic shapes of plants and triangles and rectangles in the surrounding buildings.

Then we drew some close up green ferns pine needles with pens on A4 sheets, followed by a series of drawings with various papers with different surfaces, using lead or oil pastels to explore tones, colour and the organic textures.

It was really pleasant to see everyone’s drawings together on the floor at the end of the group, it was also a lovely atmosphere with a few new folk being welcomed to take part.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, Maryhill Art Group

Sea urchins and shells turning into skulls and robots!

28 June 2018

At the Ruchill after school primary group the children worked on their sketchbooks, drawing mainly with pencils this session.

They began looking directly at some small natural objects like shells and a fragile pale green green sea urchin shell. After sketching in peace for a while looking at the textures and lines and edges, they began to draw some of their favourite things, from skulls to an iphone, to cartoon characters.

It was brilliant to see how much their confidence has developed over the last year and a half and how they enjoy spending some time with their sketchbooks.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, NUC, Young people's art

Having fun with metal and diamond!

23 June 2018

Having fun with the shodo calligraphy characters we will work with on Monday! Kin metal, gold, one of the Chinese 5 elements, kongo diamond, as well as tamashii, spirit. The meanings and variety of visuals in each of these is fascinating 😀

Category: Art Groups Tags: Shodo calligraphy

Shodo calligraphy – in the middle of a dream

15 June 2018

We had fun with trying out both the curved older Tensho style as well as the more stylized Kaisho style at the last session. First we worked with with Ki 木 – tree, experimenting with the branch like strokes, and then Yume – dream/ illusion, along with Naka – inside/ centre.

So we had some time to try out these last two Chinese kanji characters together – muchu 夢中, which can mean really into something, or in a dream world.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Shodo calligraphy

Colours of heather, hill and forest

15 June 2018

At the last Maryhill art group we used pastels to develop some landscapy pieces and textures, inspired by images of the Highlands and a wee book of poetry and art by Hamish Fulton ‘Wild Life – Walks in the Cairngorms’.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, Maryhill Art Group