The beauty of Arabic Calligraphy

Among all the languages in the world, none celebrate the form of the written alphabet like the arabic language. In this language, alphabets are like dancers, dancing to the tune of the calligraphers pen.

Traditional arabic calligraphy can be flowing like the deewani font, or be stiff and straight like the kufi font, or it can take the contemporary avatar from the brush of the artist. There are innumerable fonts in arabic, each a visual treat if you are into typography.

Sharjah Calligraphy Institute hosts the 'Calligraphy Biennial' where calligraphy artists from all over the world display their work. This unique event has influenced us to try some typography in our work.

Here are a few of our paintings celebrating the beauty of arabic calligraphy.





The orange colored flowing style is called the Deewani Jalil while the golden font - sharp and straight is called the Kufi style of calligraphy.






Our experiments in the contemporary styles:

Photoshop once again...

I think I am bitten by the photoshop bug.. I found a few sites on the net with grunge brushes and vectors. I made a wallpaper with these which I edited on photoshop and got these pics..

Working on Adobe Photoshop

It has been a very long time since this blog has been updated.. I hope to be more regular from now onwards.

Currently I am learning and experimenting on Adobe Photoshop. Our teacher Mr.Noori introduced us to this magical software. Before this, I was under the impression that photoshop was a software for photographers. Mr. Noori was raving about the use of photoshop in art which piqued our interest. I googled for 'art using photoshop' and came across an artist called Malik Anas on Deviant art. His compositions were so beautiful that it that I wanted to use photoshop in my art. Malik Anas's works can be viewed on this link:

http://malikanas.deviantart.com/gallery/

Inspired with such lovely calligraphy, I am trying to learn photoshop with the help of the various tutorials available on the net along with my own experiments with a lot of trial and error attempts.

I am posting a couple of compositions I did using photoshop...

This picture is an abstract composition of arabic calligraphy. The next contains the word Shanthi written in Hindi..

Some Photography

Photography is a recent addition to our art world. During my trip to Turkey, I found quite a few interesting subjects to capture on my camera.



Pets are a difficult subject to capture as they never sit still. I had to wait for quite some time and had to make quite a few attempts to get the right picture



The imposing structures of mosques in Turkey are a photographers delight. The clarity of the picture depends on getting the picture with the exact quantity of sun light at the exact angle. These are two of my most favorites.

Abstract Sculpture

Last week we created the mould and cast our sculptures in polyester resin. Polyester is a very light weight medium to cast in but is quite messy. We had to work outdoors as the chemicals have a really pungent smell which is quite unbearable. But the final outcome is so beautiful and the resin used in the casting gives an image of old copper sculptures...

Here are some work in progress pictures of the mould and the casting.

The scuptures after painting:-

Glazing ceramics

We glazed our ceramic pieces last week.. Many times, glazing springs surprises that can be sometimes good or sometimes nasty.. This happens inspite of experimenting with the glazes before applying them to the pieces..These are a few of the pictures of our pieces after glazing....

I was really not satisfied with the glazing of this piece.. I wanted a more earthly color but the glazing tricked me..

This piece looks great after glazing. The combination of basic colors of red white and black gives the piece a nice finish..

Here also the glazing has been successful and the colors are vibrant and beautiful..

The glazing of the individual pieces were not really satisfactory..But the piece looks good when mounted on a stand

Sculpture

Another area in which we are competing in the november exhibition is sculpture.. We have started on two sculptures..The basic shape in clay is finished and we are planning to make a mould and then cast it in polyester fibre resin.. I am posting some pics of the two sculptures.





This sculpture is made by me and is a depiction of motherhood.. Pushpa has depicted an elephant in her sculpture..