Creative preparation

Halloween Masks and Autumn Crowns

Halloween Masks and Autumn Crowns

A simple fun way to make a Halloween mask or Autumnal crown is to use a long strip of thick paper sized to fit around the wearer’s head, and decorate and trim this to your fanciful and fantastical desire! You can enjoy experimenting with different… Read More »Halloween Masks and Autumn Crowns

Laying out materials for the drawing trees day

Laying out materials for the drawing trees day

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… Read More »Laying out materials for the drawing trees day

Tree drawings by Margaret Kerr and Blair Thomson

Preparing for a drawing trees day in June

We are preparing for a summery day of drawing trees in the countryside outside Glasgow near Lenzie with Margaret Kerr. The day will be on the 2nd of June. It will be nice to be outside and engage with the trees and nature through our… Read More »Preparing for a drawing trees day in June

Shodo practice

Preparation for Zen Heart Brush

We will try working from the old visual pictgrams, first curved into shell and bone, for kou (光) and myou (明). Koumyou means radiant light, which combines well with our other character Spring (春)! We will look at the tensho as well as kaisho styles… Read More »Preparation for Zen Heart Brush

Sho practice

Painting with sumi ink – Sho practice

Making some marks with fude brushes and fudepen. Beginning sho practice with the brush stopping and flicking, speed of the marks and energy. Kanji characters ten – heavens/ sky and shin or kokoro – heart/ mind.

Graphic design geometric tasks

Using art brushes (filled with ink) and Prockey and Maped pens to experiment on cartridge paper with a graphic design balance of colours and angular shapes. The ink creates a good textural contrast with the less flat more marky pens which helps with variety in… Read More »Graphic design geometric tasks