Zainab's Art Adventures

I have seen artists who sketch or draw special, unusual stuff only, but then maybe sketching is something very special for them. For me though, sketching is something very habitual and everyday; kind of like an exercise I try to do regularly, just to keep myself in shape. Thus the subjects of my drawings are also everyday objects - you are unlikely to find in my sketchbook a sketch of a pretty vase of roses but you are very likely to find a drawing of a pile of books or a cluttered table. I also tend to sketch  with pens rather than pencils  because then I can't erase or keep on trying to make my lines straight; I simply   draw , without criticizing my own work. While I'm drawing with pens, I am not expecting perfect end-results; instead, I am simply enjoying the journey, and am more at peace with myself. So here are some more pen-sketches. Although I have mainly used black fineliner pens instead of coloured ones, I have used coloured highlighter markers (one of my a...

I have been playing around with typography for quite some time and through the years, I have learnt lots of things about it (most of them from experience). Here are some tips that might be useful to people new to typography, or want to improve at it. Most of these tips are more of principles rather than tips as they cover typography in general, not one aspect of it.  1. Play around with your words , and feel free to break all limitations and rules of shape, size, proportion and positioning. Remember, you are not practicing handwriting , so forget all the rules they taught you at school. Experiment -  Try stretching out some of your letters, or make some words larger than others to increase emphasis. Also,you don't have to obsess over upper and lowercases - I often use a mixture of both, because that way I have more choice to choose a letter that fits more into the typography style I am using. 2. Ensure that your text is read-able . Experiment as much as you want to, but...

Soon I was asked to make more flyers. Here was another chance to polish my design skills! My next task was making a flyer for a workshop for teachers titled 'Resolving issues of Misbehaviour'.  I accepted the offer gratefully, but I soon realized it wasn't going to be easy. Infact, it wasn't going to be easy at all. The title of the workshop wasn't going to make the search for an appropriate image easy(All of ERDC's Workshops' flyers have images, so I was supposed to make one with an image as well). The title was so generic, at first it seemed impossible to come up with an image. I surfed on Google images (I'm not much into illustration on the computer so the image had to come from Google, obviously)   for at least forty minutes before I found the image on the brown flyer.  Then I found another image, the one on the other flyer. I knew it was the perfect image. Then I adapted the brown flyer and changed the image. The orange-and-blue one was ac...

I am so sorry for not being able to post in October until yet! Anyways, here is a painting I made around late September; make-up on canvas once again. sorry for the bad quality :/  There was something wrong with our DSLR's memory cards so I had to take this picture with my mother's phone I made this one on a 10" by 10" inches canvas. Although I intended to make something entirely with lip-gloss initially, I did not have enough of it and the it was too dull  so I was compelled to use lipstick( I hate everything dull ). Later on I used some eye-shadow for the clouds and too make the buildings look shiny. I did not have any plan for this beforehand, nor did I make any initial sketches; I just pulled off the plastic covering from the canvas and got to work. I thought I would make something abstract but that didn't just happen. I made a few lipstick strokes and then decided that it was a building, then made more buildings. This is called ' Illusion' b...

This is a canvas painting I made using make-up. Although I have made several paintings with cosmetics before as well(you can find at least a few posts on my blog with the label Make-up Art ; but they are all very old) this was the first time I made one on a canvas. The canvas was a lovely size, 6" by 6"inches(the smallest our art store has). I used substandard-quality lip gloss(which someone gave me and my sister as a gift but I decided to use them for art instead because they were not very good-quality), and some of my mom's expired lipsticks, plus some old eyeliner and nail-polish that we barely use.   This is what I do with make-up.  XD haha Even though the results aren't satisfactory enough, I had a good time making this. I guess I hadn't drawn hands for a long time, even though they are something I love drawing.  It was fun. :D

Recently I began to realize that my drawings were loosing their spontaneity, that they were becoming more deliberate than ever, and that drawing was not meant to be so deliberate . This thought was somehow very worrying. :/ I had to do something to make my drawings as springy, spontaneous, and playful as I myself am. ;D  For that, I decided to do sketches purely with pens . No pencil under-drawings, and absolutely no rulers or compasses or geometrical tools whatsoever. I decided not to be too obsessed with proportions and straight lines and accurate angles, and focus more on the essence of drawing rather than its mundane technicalities. This one was the first drawing I did with my new mission in mind. I started off with the scissors and the jar and then proceeded to the surroundings. In this drawing you can see me and my siblings' joint desks, in its typical, natural, messy state. XD Even though the results are not very good at all, the activity was very relaxin...

I'm not much of a graphic designer, but I had to do a lot of it lately, both for my Dad's organization ERDC( http://erdconline.org/ ) and for me and my siblings' startup, Clayholds ( https://clayholds.blogspot.com/ ).  Here are some flyers I made recently. All of these are made on canva.com, an online design software we discovered not too long ago. I made this one back in June, I think, when ERDC got its branch office in PECHS relocated A flyer for a workshop This was a flyer someone made for a workshop @ ERDC, 'Clubs instead of Classrooms'.  When I was asked for feedback, I suggested un-bolding some of the text, using a better font for the workshop title, and reducing the overall font size to create more breathing space and  overcome the congested look. a flyer I made  for that same workshop(it wasn't  accepted, so I didn't complete it :/(ignore the  text, okay?)) here's what the flyer ...

Hi there guys! These are some drawings(doodles, actually) that show how I feel about these four emotions, Sadness, Happiness, Fear, and Anger. Sadness Anger Happiness Fear

I made this Canvas painting during Ramadan with acrylics. The canvas was perhaps the largest ever I painted-the size was beautiful-a long 12'' by 36'' inches(1 by 3 feet) and I had a great time painting this. The only two colors I used were white and aquamarine blue. The results are satisfactory, I suppose. Now the painting is leaning against the table where my laptop sits, waiting to be framed. :D I am sorry for the bad photography :/

I painted this plant pot quite a few days back inspired from my own painting(the one in the last post). I made the eyes, eyebrows and nose with Potter's Clay and stuck them onto a plant pot with German white glue when they were still wet. After the features had dried, I painted the plant pot using white acrylics and then added the colors using highlighter markers(orange, yellow, green, pink, violet, and blue).

I did this water colour painting back in March.

I did this panting a few days ago.I didn't mean to paint this, I planned to write the quote"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence"(Vince Lombardi). I had only painted the background and written the word 'Perfection' on it with grey when I decided that it looked awful, and so I scratched it away with the back of my paintbrush. This scratched patch of grey paint became the first building in the painting.  I added a few cars and more buildings, scratching away doors and windows. I decided that the sun should not be grey like the buildings, because buildings are made by man, and the sun is not, so I painted the sun white. I think white is a color that portrays purity-compared to grey-and so the painting shows a contrast between things created by man and things created by God. Also,the white sun creates an impression of extreme heat-which is caused by global warming; a result of the increasing urbanization. City Life: ...

Last Saturday, my younger brother was busy working on the laptop. He was too busy to notice his surroundings, and so, taking advantage of this, I secretly did a sketch of him(after the initial sketch, I decided to paint over it with water colours, but the effect was so horrible that I destroyed the painting. But I'm glad I've got a good photograph of the sketch!) 'Poor posture' I altered the brightness and contrast to make the pencil strokes more visible

I started this painting around two months back. There was a canvas on which my brother had started painting something with black-I don't remember what exactly-but he hadn't finished it(and did not intend to do that in the future, either). I asked him if he wanted to complete the painting,and he said no, so I took the canvas from him. Then I sketched this mosque on it, and the next day I painted the background with black oil paint, and filled in the little windows with black marker. I decided that I would paint the mosque in white, but, sadly, I had run out of white oil paint, and so I had to wait until our next trip to an art store... This is what it looked like then...  I forgot to buy the paint when we went shopping for art supplies next time, and so I had to wait until our next trip to the art store. This time when I asked for white oil paint, they said it was out of stock! I had almost given up hope when I saw a tube of silver oil paint. I decided to paint the mosque...