Zainab's Art Adventures

Watercolour on paper

I made this poster(which I have pinned up on the soft board facing my desk) to encourage myself. It was almost done, when I decided to give it a shiny effect by putting some glossy eye shadow on it. The effect was horrible! However, I managed to correct it by erasing it. It looks OK, I suppose. But it looked better before the eye shadow episode! XD

I began painting this canvas back in August but it wasn't until late September that I finished it. Actually, I spoiled it(I didn't mean to, of course). Let me tell you how I mended it. What I used: Purified linseed oil, Oil paints, cotton buds, and paint brushes First I painted a beige background(I don't know why it doesn't look beige in the picture), then I made this deep maroon dot in the center of the canvas, and surrounded it by  these maroon dots(I made the dots with the cotton buds) Then I surrounded the maroon dots with a circle of red dots. I skipped a layer right here: now for the orange dots The circle expands,more and more... AND THEN............ A DISASTER happened!!! The canvas got spoiled somehow... ...actually one of the dots smeared, and I was just correcting it when the paint smeared more and more and in the end it looked so unbearable...I had no idea what to do!!!! apologies for not having a picture....

I made this A-shaped Pendant for a friend(her name begins with A(as you might have guessed, it is Abiha XD)). I made the letter 'A' out of air-dry clay. I made a ball and then smashed it into a slab, from which I cut out the letter A using a steel ruler and a pin. After it had dried, I painted it Magenta (using acrylics mixed with white glue for increased brightness and a pinch of silver dust for a soft shine).  I left the paint overnight to dry and in the morning I decorated it with nail polish(gold and pink)(which, as a matter of fact, has become one of my favorite mediums XD).  The nail polish applicator was too thick a size, so I dipped my size 01 paintbrush(a most useful size, I must say) into the nail polish and added the gold stripes with it.(I had to clean it afterwards with nail-polish remover, and it did dissolve, except that it left a slight shine and stiffness in the brush). Then I found a thread, tied the 'A' and added some dark and light pink be...

I made this poster not very long ago. It didn't turn out exactly the way I expected it to, but I guess the typography's OK and the hatching(the computer chair and the man's suit) is not bad. Ta-da!  I made this sketch of Minar-e-Pakistan(one of Pakistan's famous historical landmarks) recently(using a reference, of course). It's really good, except for a fact that my silly little seven-year-old cousin put green pen marks in two places. D: and I had to get this one FRAMED!!!

This is a mix-media pot. I used clay, water, poster paints, acrylic paints, white glue, UHU, gold nail polish(and its remover) in the making of this pot. Can you guess how????

I made this bookmark for a friend. I cut pieces of paper from an old magazine to make the pattern. I used a multi-colored embroidery thread (threaded with beads) for the tassel.

I made this card earlier in July for the five-year-old birthday girl when we were invited to a birthday party. :D I used a decorative punch to punch the design (on the left side of the card) on a separate used page and then used it as a stencil to carry the pattern on the card. I used different mediums for doing that(including pointers, felt-tip pens, colour pencil, and even oil pastel!). Then I did the typography in my font 'Funk Serifs' and then filled in all the shapes(which, as you might have noticed, are yellow, purple, green, red, orange and blue, to coordinate with the colours in the pattern on the left). Then I added a bunch of stars alongside the typography to make the font look more jumpy and interesting. 

Hello there, This is to announce that I have created a photography blog, so I will be no longer posting any photography over here.  Click  here  to visit my photography blog(and don't forget to comment as well! XD) I will, however, continue to post other crafts, drawings and art over here as always. Thank you, Zainab Salman

Just recently we bought some (more) potter's clay. I made this pot with the clay. It was great fun playing with the clay. :P Thankfully, I didn't use any water(except a few drops I used to smooth it in the end) and so it didn't crack after drying.  The unpainted pot All done

I made these bookmarks lately. Made this 'quote' up myself. I do that all the time. A lovely quote... On the backside of bookmarks I make I write my blog addresses. It helps to advertise for them(it's quite another thing that most people keep the bookmark and ignore my humble request to visit the blogs).

I recently made this brightly-colored wall hanging from colorful beads. For the hanging, I made some square beads from white air-dry clay which I painted with dark pink and orange acrylic paints. Homemade beads Then I used some multicolored embroidery thread and some other beads to create this wall hanging. Close-up

Just recently, we attended a three-day workshop on Photography. It was wonderful, and we learnt a lot of principles and elements of good photographs, eg. catchlights(in portraits), rule of thirds, etc. Here I am sharing (some) of the shots-good ones- which I took for the workshop. Most of them I took for home assignments. We had to take a depth and perspective shot. I decided to do something totally unique: I went on top of these slides and took a picture from there. I wasn't sure how it would turn out but it looks, well, nice. We also had to take a night shot. I captured these lamps against the night sky. I really like this one. A turkey. (We had to take two-rule-of-thirds-shots and the head of the turkey(which was my main focus) is off-center.) I found its head and beak really interesting, so I decided to capture those. (It was kinda difficult, because the bird wouldn't stay still). A lovely pink rose, in full bloom(the rule of thirds, again). A fr...

Hello everyone! I'm back again. Ramadan Mubarak to you all! My (best) friend, Abiha, turned eleven the other day so I decided to share the gift and card over here(btw, I haven't given either of them to her yet, because we haven't met for quite a few days. :P Never mind. I never do  manage to keep things secret for long. XD) As I wasn't feeling particularly well(nothing, nothing, I just got a temperature)during the last week, I didn't have much time or energy to prepare a proper  present for her, so I just made an embroidered fabric bookmark. It was an experiment.  My sister was embroidering something for herself and I got pooped up just looking at her. I decided to embroider something too. I decided to make a unique embroidered bookmark. I found some brown fabric, drew a pattern on it, and then embroidered over it. The results were satisfactory, and so I sewed it at the back and washed it, and, well, it was done. It looked pretty awesome. Below is a pic...

I made this tiny chair out of twigs which I collected from a park. I used glue and thread to bind it together. Right now its sort of fallen apart(actually I don't even know where exactly it is at the moment!) I want to make a photo frame out of twigs except that I don't have any long twigs! D:

Hello, bloggers! It's good to be back again. (My papers are not over, but the English ones are. I'm sure I'll pass with a B. Or perhaps a C. Or D. Or E. You never know...) OK, so this is a table I built with my younger brother, Ibraheem . It took a couple of days to make(but Ibraheem keeps 'mending' it, so you can guess it has lots of faults. However, the legs are the real problem. They keep swaying and sometimes come off loose :/) Anyways, it's not so bad. I still kind of like its design. The top was originally my idea, with gaps between little planks of wood. And we both came up with the idea for the leg's structure.  However, I'm glad that despite the many conflicts, the table is not so bad ;P 

Just sneaked( sneaked. really!!!! ) out some time to post this. This was a picture I took at a visit to Frere Hall(I took this quite a long time ago, possibly a month ago...), which is one of Karachi's well-known landmarks(on the upper floor is Sadequain gallery, an art gallery displaying Sadequain's unique and bold paintings.) A lovely place...but, sadly, is almost-shattered-thanks to the extremely (in)efficient Karachi government... 

This time when we went to the park in our locality, I decided to take a few photographs. So I took some of the plants and flowers I really liked. Btw, I searched so desperately for a china rose (hibiscus rosea) in full bloom but failed to find any. I so love those. Sunset Rose A bunch of lovely pinks A plant in a flowerpot. I was intrigued by this one because of the size and shape of its leaves. However the picture doesn't focus that well. click on it for a better view. Anyways, Happy -belated-spring!

A little poster! I love it, it's so cute! I began with drawing a slanted pen(It's a black (Dollar) pointer, my favorite pen for drawing and writing(Btw, The outlook of the pen has changed recently, it's body is now black and the cap is silver, I couldn't do that).  After that I drew a stick figure balanced on the pen. I added details, drew on the clothes. Then I drew the bubble on top. I couldn't decide on what to draw, first I drew some random doodles on it, but that looked a bit weird.  I decided to write the word 'ideas' in it, because ideas are the root of all drawings. It seemed weird then but with the awesome typography and the sparkly stars it looked unusually good.(It's just that the letter 'S' was yellow so it blended too much with the stars. It would have looked better with green). I coloured everything in and then wrote the quote I just made up. XD  I wrote my name with purple because it's my favorite color. It looks great,...

I recently did this sketch. After all those fists I drew lately in a poster I didn't draw any more 'hands'. I completed this on Tuesday. This is a 'V' sign, or, more commonly known as 'victory' sign. I had a lot of fun doing it , especially the background hatching ( I learnt this technique in the book, 'Drawing Media') which I did with a blunt HB and a 2B pencil. My model for this sketch -my left hand! XD

I was feeling a bit bored these days, so I decided to be creative and make something, which really livens me up. XD My sister suggested that I make something out of the Sculpturing-book-and-kit we brought quite a long time ago but didn't make any complete thing out of. I decided to do just that. I opened it up and decided to make a horse instead of a human figure or portrait, that would be something completely different yet fun to do. First I began making the armature(the wiry skeleton, you could say), so I took out two plastic cogs and three long metal wires(as par the instructions in the guidebook) and began twiddling with them. ;) It took one whole day to make the skeleton, and I was extremely proud of it. The armature. At least it looks like a four legged creature that has a head and a tail! Then I left it like it for a couple of days. Later, I covered it with foil (a difficult job to do, the foil wouldn't stay in place and I secured it with tape, which eventua...

These frames I made earlier on last year but forgot to share on this blog. But as I am about to give away one of them, I decided to share photos of them here, because they took so much time and energy to make. This photo frame I made first. It is rather simple, but it looks great, doesn't it? I painted it with poster paints(mixed with a bit of silver dust to add a soft shine) and made a simple pattern with contrasting orange. And this one I made after that. One Unique thing about it is that it has curved sides, which I have never done before. It is all shaped with a filer, and I had fun doing that. :D I painted several layers of blue paint on it(mixed with German White Glue) which made it quite opaque. I glued on a pretty blue butterfly to decorate.