Enso zen circles and old bone language at Maryhill Art Group

30 April 2019

In this session generously supported by the GB Sasakawa Foundation, our group of adults with children were able to try out Japanese calligraphy for the first time and find out about some of the history and culture behind the beautiful characters.

The participants enjoyed the challenge and variety of making an enso circle in a single mark – reflecting their experience and being in that moment, and in some ways a meditation in itself. Time to breathe, relax and connect helped to settle into the calligraphy, but folk were very quick to get going and try out the kanji characters.

As we have worked a lot with natural materials in this group previously it was ideal to try out characters such as moku 木 – wood, and kumo 雲 – cloud. 

The younger participants engaged very readily to the older tensho, kinbun and kokotsubun styles – back to the shell and bone language which evolved into kanji. We considered the connections to the old Scottish Pictish and Viking Norse visual languages and found these to be closer than we would have thought. 

Kindly supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation

Category: Art Groups Tags: Community Groups, Maryhill Art Group, Sasakawa Foundation, Shodo calligraphy

Mysterious shapes and energy of trees

29 March 2019

Continuing from last week’s theme of spring growth we probed the branchy twisting shapes within trees, more easily seen before all the leaves come out.

Thinking about the graceful shapes and sense of wisdom that trees convey, we were free to make more artworks and find connections between roots, branches, seeds, shoots, buds and the energetic positive feeling of Spring.

Using coloured pencils and pens we each drew our own tree of life.

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Spring growth and life emerging

29 March 2019

The buds of spring and shoots, and young green leaves inspired us over two nights at Maryhill Art Group. We used our senses to look closely at the buds, daffodils and other spring shoots and flowers we had brought in, also smelling the scents.

After some leaf like curvy doodles with organic shapes in various colours, we listened to some poetry and words about the spring, the changing season, and seeds sprouting.

single wish
to sleep a night
below cherry blossoms

Ryokan

Different types of coloured pencils were used fro drawing, some finer and more delicate as well as chunkier richer coloured ones. These were ideal for giving a sense of the delicate colours at the start of this season.

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Can you read this?

28 March 2019

See if you can decode this curious creative piece of writing-drawing by one of participants, it has a rocky theme.

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Expansive vistas, soaring gannets, flying marks

28 March 2019

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 gardens of Japan and China garden design, which placed carefully chosen stones of particular shapes into spaces to create a harmonic landscape world of mountains, seas, waterfalls and forest.

Fine pens as well as prockey pens and metallic pens were ideal for drawing from our expanded amount of stone – one of the participants kindly brought a beautiful collection of stones and minerals of mesmerising colours and textures.

In the second half of the group we used black ink and different types of brushes to explore totally different ways of markmaking, still keeping the textured or smooth feel of the stones, and with the spaciousness of the sea and garden spaces.   
 

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Lava rising from patterns of earth and rock

28 March 2019

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 mountains, and rocky hills lowering to valleys and streams with animals and people active below the peaks.

 
Our doodles were tectonic and very craggy.

Working on black paper with oil pastels helped us explore rocky textures, and enjoy trying out some funky colour combinations. The weight and feel of the stones and rocks helped to guide us. Some of us drew or wrote words about what rocks an rocky places meant for us.

We also had time to relax, thinking about this theme and feeling nice and grounded!

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Love is in the air, with satellites whizzing by the stars

28 February 2019

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 excellent book about the solar system which helped us to draw some planetary shapes and asteroids. And the combination of visuals with words in concrete poetry helped inspire us too.

We chatted about some ideas for a composition for the big joint piece on thick cartridge paper, which we cut to match the size of the tables. We painted with watercolours and used pens also and just had fun creating something together on a large scale (3 metres wide approx).

We worked on this in only 45 minutes before the end of the session, it amazed us how we could cover this size and not be short of ideas either. We encouraged each other, swapped places to freshen things up, and enjoyed the freedom of working with what felt like no boundaries.

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Exploring the cosmos, with a slice of watermelon 🙂

21 February 2019

‘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 listened to some poetry about the sun, moon and stars, and thought about the effect of their presence and energy on the earth, people and creatures below to get some ideas for doodling and writing a few words too.

As well as prockey water based pens, we used posca paint pens and then art brushes (cartridges are coloured inks) which folk really enjoyed the freedom of – the silky flowing strokes and dry brushy finish worked well on textured paper.

Some aliens appeared in the drawings as well, and one participant creatively moved from drawing a black hole explosion to a colourful watermelon explosion.

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Snowflakes and festive natural patterns

21 December 2018

In the last two sessions of Maryhill art group in 2018, with it getting closer to Christmas (and also the fact that the centre staff asked if we could make some decorations for the building) we had festive pattern themed groups.

Folk seemed to take to this well, combining craft and drawing. Following our guidance they folded and cut thin paper snowfalkes in a variety of designs, mounting onto coloured paper or colouring the shapes of the negative spaces.

We also had some free doodling time, with natural geometry and more chaotic textures to look at such as fractal shapes, or of ice cracking, and this helped us create more free festive patterns such as with stars and simple trees.

We hung and stuck on the walls many of the pieces in the Maryhill Hub building. Mince pies, chocolates, tea and ginger cookies helped make the nights enjoyable and relaxed 🙂

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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

Swimming through the kelp forest

20 December 2018

Continuing our mysterious doodly journey into the environment of sea and shore, we began with some imaginative doodles of the moon above the sea, inspired by some old poems.

Thinking about the sea creatures and kelp and coral, we also wrote a few words about it.

After developing our own individual pieces with Posca paint pens and Prockey water based markers, we cleared some space on the tables for two large rolls of paper to be spread out and worked on.

These were fun relaxing pieces, and we had a kind of musical chairs so we could shift around and everybody could work on different parts of the drawings and look for ways to collaborate with other folk’s markmaking.

Our aquatic shapes and creatures grew in the piece, moving and swaying with the sea current as we drew on. A shoal of fish passed near rocks on the sea bed, then swam through the translucent green kelp, and an octopus rested near a starfish.

It was great having the shell collection there to touch, smell and look at, and listen to as well, feeling the varied textures and listening to the strong sound of the sea. So refreshing!

Kindly supported by Glasgow Connected Arts Network

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