Mountain caves and nesting mythical birds

15 June 2018

At Ruchill community centre we worked on the A4 sketchbooks with the children on some imaginative drawings and doodles.

It’s really nice to see their engagement with markmaking, and freedom to express themselves through art!

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

Drawing Trees day at Lenzie

5 June 2018

It was a peaceful yet creative day led by Margaret and Blair, with a super group of folk who enjoyed getting to know the trees and forest.

We began small in the morning with some relaxed doodly pieces followed by a mindful visual exploration of the trees whilst still in the workshop, and inspiration from the tree markmaking of Hokusai which we also worked from. We then walked in the forest spending time with the trees and engaging with our senses, drawing the sounds, collecting rubbings, textures and natural objects..

In the afternoon we chose a tree to focus on and connect with, working with moss and twigs from around the tree with ink and some charcoal. After a wee break and cuppa, and nicely timed to move into the workshop and avoid the thundery build up of rain cloud, our final piece of the day was an exuberant flourish of biological tree, branch and moss markmaking, using some natural things we collected like pine cones, as well as twigs and brushes.

Some comments from participants:

‘Loved the whole day, especially enjoyed being outdoors amongst the trees. No where to go, just sitting, feeling’

‘I liked the gentle introduction then the contrast between being indoors and outdoors – it felt encouraging and interesting’

‘Tree markings – memories of activities as a child. Preciousness of trees’

‘I really enjoyed the drawing to sounds – I used colours for different sounds which was fun! Also using moss etc to paint was great. Also going out in nature I am able to notice small details’

‘Playing with the wide brush and coloured inks – surprisingly easy to make graceful marks with the whole arm’

Category: Art Groups Tags: Environment, Margaret Kerr

Laying out materials for the drawing trees day

5 June 2018

We set out packs for each person joining the group, with different textures of papers suitable for rubbings and drawing, and a small bag with graphite stick and oil pastels, and a mix of pens too.

For the larger and joint pieces we have a wide array of brushes which will be fun to play around with, colour inks and water based paints, as well as Indian and sumi ink.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Creative preparation

Life force and lightning Shodo calligraphy

5 June 2018

At Zen Brush Heart we worked from some inspiring characters related to life and the elements, such as tsuchi 土 – earth /soil, mei 命 – core, destiny, life, and jinzu 神通 – spiritual/ soul power.

To get a fuller understanding and feel about these we looked at the older meanings and visuals from China such as the jin which is related to thunder and lightning. So a crackling set of characters to experiment with!

Category: Art Groups Tags: Shodo calligraphy

Relaxing and meditative tracing of the Heart Sutra

2 May 2018

In the Garden room at KSD a small group of us began Shakyo – copying sutras – by chatting about the history and styles and looking at some examples of the characters such as mu – dream and ku – space. Then we slowly and quietly worked on the tracing itself.

We used transparent Japanese paper laid upon the example piece (by Blair) so we could see the Chinese characters coming through, and meditatively worked on one character at a time.

The group found the Shakyo method of working on a tracing to be quite different, for instance we used small brushes and ground our own ink with the hard ink blocks, which was a nice thing to do noticing the darkness of the ink and even the sound of the grinding, and we were tracing the old characters passed on to us over many centuries in the example sutra.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Meditation, Shodo calligraphy

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

2 May 2018

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.

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

Relaxing, making some marks, meditating

2 May 2018

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 words for inspiration and made some very chilled flowing marks with brush pens, good fun to use 🙂

Category: Art Groups Tags: Meditation

Imagining passing clouds and rugged mountain ranges – Maryhill art group

22 April 2018

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 of the hills and open space.

After that we enjoyed working on a long drawing on cartridge paper together using graphite and black markers. This took around 40 minutes to build up, partly inspired by the Cuillin mountains of Skye, and also bringing in our imagination too!

Maryhill art group mountain ridge 3 www.drawingandpaintingstudio.com from Drawing and Painting Studio on Vimeo.

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

Listening to the wind, tasting the air, drawing on the mountain

22 April 2018

On the slopes of Ben Challuim, near Crianlarich at the North of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, we walked and looked at the textures and colours of the vista and the hill paths, rocks and flora beneath our feet. The colours were amazing and we did some drawing though the wind was pretty strong at times.

Mountain Lichen www.drawingandpaintingstudio.com from Drawing and Painting Studio on Vimeo.

The snow patches in the corries made for some interesting dynamic drawing compositions looking into the distance.. and the colourful greens, silvers and oranges of the lichen and moss on the boulders was fascinating to peer closely at and draw the outlines of their shapes along with some of the varied textures.

mountain burn 1 www.drawingandpaintingstudio from Drawing and Painting Studio on Vimeo.

Category: Art Walks Tags: Environment

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

2 April 2018

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 he did really well with!

grey as a mouse,
big as a house,
nose like a snake,
I make the earth shake..
(Short excerpt from the Lord of the Rings)

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