A chicken dragon and other lively sketches at Ruchill

5 October 2018

In this group at Ruchill Community Centre different tasks were tried out by the young people.

Influenced by anime and manga, dragons were popular, such as the Story of the Small Girl and the Dragon, and imagery from Princess Mononoke, a classic film from the Japanese animation Studio Ghibli.

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Workshop for North United Communities

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

Drawing in the jungle at the Botanic Gardens

22 September 2018

We set up to draw inside the humid warmth of Kibble Palace, surrounded by the national tree fern collection (originally planted in the 1880’s impressively) partly as it was quite blowy outside. It was an enjoyable group and people found the two hours was a nice amount of time out of their usual day to focus on sketching.

We started with some warm up doodling inspired by the spikes of the cacti and curves of the ferns, then we took some to look at all the plants, their varied hues and textures, noticed their refreshing smell too, and the touch of some leaves.

We then continued with a few different types of drawings, each engaging with the shapes or textures of the ferns and plants. Afterwards Blair did another demo looking at the graceful long curving lines of the Kibble architectural space combined with the lush inter tangled plants and tree shapes.

Inside the palace there was certainly a palatial feeling of height and grandeur, with the decorative ironwork details, with a really exotic atmosphere and feeling. Folk found some really interesting angles and places to look through between the trees, twisting pillars, the curved light reflectors, and pathways.

A couple of drawing compositions looking at the glasshouse ceiling especially had an almost futuristic sci fi feel, which is really testament to the design and construction. Amazing that it was moved here from ferny environs of Loch Long in 1873, maybe it transported itself here like a spaceship?

After a wee break for a biscuit and drink we had about an hour to work on a longer piece, and some folk chose to continue some more doodly drawings. There was no feeling of pressure to come up with anything, no grand drawings expected, it was a time to relax and enjoy drawing the surroundings and play around with the materials. There were pencils and pens, as well as different types of paper such as cartridge, sugar paper and coloured paper.

To see past Drawing Group activities, please check the Drawing Group news page.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Drawing Groups

Meditation and calm at Brushing Fire

8 September 2018

We started the day at Lenzie with a chat about the shared cultural connections around the five elements, particularly through the Himalayan area, from India, Tibet to China and Japan. We looked at the variety of meanings as well as the different approaches of the Godai Buddhist five elements, Bon and the Gogyo Chinese Five Phases.

Looking at the shamanic origins of the Chinese characters and the curvy Tensho calligraphy style was helpful to connect to the elements in a deeper way.

Margaret had prepared a fire for us to all enjoy sitting with, so we sat in meditation by it. The wind funneled the flames and smoke with real speed and energy but it was still calm sitting there by the trees.

Experimenting with inks and holding the Japanese fude brushes, we made some marks to explore our feeling and experience of being with fire.

The wood burning stove also helped us stay in the mood and continue the relationship to fire from outdoors. When we moved onto the character for wind, kaze, we had some extra inspiration from the Shakuhachi flute!

Larger brushes, paper and orange sumi ink were used to play around with some large versions of fire and wind 🙂

After a quiet lunch with hearty sweet potato soup and riceballs, we had a short break then walked to a small river to peacefully engage with the water and space elements, helped by Margaret. It was really peaceful sitting by the water and contemplating the flow, sometimes fast or slow, looking at the sense of edge at the banks, and being surrounded by the greens of river reeds and plants.

It began to rain softly which enlivened the colours and helped make us more aware of the space element on the way back. We made some watery flowing marks then worked on the kanji characters (with both kaisho and tensho styles) for water – sui, space/ sky/ emptiness – ku, and earth – chi.

We then had some time to try out more of the tensho style or go for it and combine all five characters together on a single sheet of washi paper.

Category: Art Groups Tags: Environment, Margaret Kerr, Meditation, Shodo calligraphy

Summery art groups – patterns, colour and lucky laugh!

8 September 2018

There were varied NUC summer art and craft sessions in Maryhill, Ruchill and Milton with young people and adults, they were fun groups inspired by a few different themes and using ways of working that were enjoyable while learning new methods.

There was a large banner with ‘Summer Sunshine’ drawn with pens, with a funky lizard carefully added in, plus hand stencil drawing using the hand shape as a composition for decorative patterns worked into the finger and palm shapes..

The lucky laugh game we played was really light hearted, with the kids closing their eyes while moving cut outs of facial features onto their head shape they had drawn – other children guiding them to the best, or worst!, spot to be stuck down. It was a nice way for them to make some quirky portraits while working with each other 🙂

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

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