The Wild Garden

Faqr (Poverty)

2012-01-28T11:24:00.001+02:00

“Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of Poverty:
Having nothing and wanting nothing.”
~ Rumi

A lesson our consumer age is absolutely terrified of...
The color for this design had to be grey, more accurately the color of undyed wool, a traditional clothing of holy poverty (فقر). It took a long time to figure out the composition, but the minimalism I settled on in the end felt appropriate.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

Finished pencils

Sepia watercolor provided a warm grey, and an evocative texture

The outlines are dark brown, making the sepia look more grey than brown (if they'd been dark grey, they would have made it look more saturated and brown rather than grey). Of course the photos being in poor light are not representative.

Khawf (Fear)

2012-01-24T08:00:00.020+02:00

When I realized that my anxieties all boiled down to a fear of things not turning out the way I want them to, I knew it was time to work on this word, خوف, the generic Arabic word for fear.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

The basis of the design came in meditation after
I decided to represent it.

Finished pencils

After filling in the color, a nice thick ivory black. I wasn't sure what color fear might be, but something dark felt appropriate.

Raghbat (Yearning)

2012-01-23T14:08:00.000+02:00

A notch above Shawq, Raghbat رغبة is yearning, desire, ardent longing.

"The seeds of yearning for the world are threefold:
excessive desires, little knowledge, and deadness of heart.
And the seeds of yearning for the hereafter are threefold as well:
few desires, illuminated knowledge, and living heart.
And the seeds of the yearning for God are threefold:
accepting the eternal summons, suffering a broken heart, and spiritual conscientiousness."
-- Ansari

Print on Redbubble. Creative process:

I got somewhere quickly but it seemed too generic.

After more explorations, returned to my first idea, but turned into a complete circle.

Finished pencils

After 3 layers of color, decided I didn't like the quality of the acrylic and started from scratch... From now on banning from my panoply any acrylic brand that's not Winsor & Newton :P

Khayal (Shadow)

2012-01-22T10:56:00.000+02:00

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." ~ C.G. Jung

The Shadow (خيال) is a psychological concept that Jung defined in the simplest possible way as "the thing a person has no wish to be." It's a subject too vast and important to really describe here, so I'll just say that, as the quote above suggests, the first step towards achieving wholeness is to face and integrate one's shadow. This is true both in analysis and in spiritual traditions. For instance, in Sufism the initiation of this process is called Tawba, whereas the Christian tradition of confession harks back to such a practice (no longer really understood). Alchemists referred to the shadow as the prima materia, "vile and glorious", as it doesn't only contain our worst aspects, but also our unrealized potentials and natural gifts we have repressed due to familial or social pressure – as indicated by the gold in this composition.

Arabic has more than one word for "shadow", but as I couldn't find the one that was used to translate the Jungian concept (if any), I chose Khayal because it also means "imagination", "ghost" and even "essence (of a person)" – adequately evoking the multifaceted aspect of the Shadow.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

I first started researching this design back in October, but
kept hitting dead ends. It just wouldn't come.

I just let it be for a while...

Finally, the night before an important talk in London,
I had a dream that hinted the time was right to
look into Khayal again.

This time it only took a few minutes...

Pencils on black Murillo paper

Inking the inside lines first

Filling the circle in white – the design itself is a void, showing the black of the paper.

Nafas (Breath)

2012-01-03T09:14:00.000+02:00

Nafas نفس is the breath, not to be confused with Nafs, the ego, which is written exactly the same way.
The Breath is Life, and carries the vital force known variously as prana, qi etc. Learning to breathe properly again is the first teaching in many if not all spiritual disciplines.

Print on Redbubble Creation process:

Elaborating on my idea in Illustrator, I hesitated between these two. I liked the "fan" shape but it seemed too cute, until it occurred to me to round off all the edges so it wouldn't stand out so badly.

Finished pencils: Hello grid my old friend...

First layer of color – love the texture here.

The second layer was diluted and meant mostly to brush gold pigment over the red.
The result is a slightly metallic red that's gorgeous in the light.

Fitra (Primordial Nature)

2012-01-01T10:23:00.001+02:00

With my best wishes for a fulfilling year, I bring you this new piece begun on the last day of 2011 and finished on the first day of 2012:

Fitra فطرة is the primordial nature (or natural disposition) of a thing or being when it is first created or born; it is the state of the newborn baby and "the natural human," completely unspoiled. I have been saving this word for today for obvious reasons. The choice of white and silver was to underline the purity of that stage which is very much like a blank page, and it also fits the day: in Lebanon the first day of the year is associated with the color white, and the first meal of the year is supposed to be made up of white dishes (such as kebbeh bilaban) to welcome in the new year.

Print on Redbubble, creation process:

I was looking for a very simple expression, preferably that
could be arranged in a square as that symbolizes wholeness.

As white on black requires many layers and that gets messy and uneven, I used a roller instead of a brush, and masking tape to define the square (this is risky and takes some experience, as the paper will almost always tear)

Using marks around the square, I start inking the lines.

This is just to show the black lines, as the final step was to ink over them in silver, for a more subdued effect. The gilding looks golden here because it reflects the wooden surfaces around it.

Thoughts about calligraphy for 2012

2011-12-28T10:14:00.000+02:00

The past year (past 6 months, really) has been a rather incredible run for me in terms of calligraphy, and I have every reason to believe it's going to go on for quite a while. Sukun makes an appropriate ending for the 2011 series; I have a no less fitting word planned for the first day of 2012, which I'll start on the 31st and finish and post on the 1st of January. In the meanwhile I wanted to put down some thoughts of mine regarding the collection so far.

I mentioned before I wasn't selling the originals yet as I don't want to break up the collection before I figure out what to do with. At the very least, I feel an exhibit is in order, because the digital reproductions I've been posting make no justice at all to the originals, their texture and the interplay of light on the gilding.

At first I was hoping for a proper exhibit with a good gallery, for the work to get due respect. Now I'm not so sure I want that. While I respect the way the professional art world and galleries work, entering that arena means removing the work from worldly circles and making it exclusive to the art circles proper. It means doubling the prices of the pieces and being entirely represented by that gallery: no more commissions, at least not without their mediation and the additional fees that incurs. (I may be wrong in how that works, but that's what I know based on artists I'm close to.) While that ensures exposure and a living for artists for who are entirely invested in this way of working, it's not the vision I have for my khatt. Keeping it "close to the people" may be a cliché, but I don't see the point in this area of my work if the average person can't see them, afford them, order a special word or even enjoy wearing them.

The more I think of it, the less interested I am in using the regular channels. I still want an exhibit, but now I'm envisioning an informal exhibit, spread by word of mouth, without media circus (nothing's emptier than being in the mainstream press or TV, I should know), and with nothing to come between the audience and the work. I don't know yet where that might be, I haven't started looking yet, but I'll have an eye on opportunities in 2012. All I really need is a well-lit room I can use for say 3 days
There are other logistics to consider, above all the framing. Aside from the cost of framing 30+ pieces, I would simply have nowhere to store them once they're framed. I would need to use temporary framing (plexiglass, cardboard and clips) for the exhibit, and get sold pieces properly framed afterwards – if the exhibit is to sell and not just to show, which I still have to make up my mind about.

So it's still early to make a move, but I wanted to put these thoughts out there and see what they may generate. Happy New Year!

Christmas calligraphy

2011-12-27T06:59:00.000+02:00

I had a slew of commissions and gifts to make for the holidays, and now that Christmas is passed and all the presents have been received, I can share them here:

For Fida فداء, editor of RAGMAG and a special person!

For my father

For my uncle

For Nisreen نسرين from her sister

And last but not least Rita ريتا, from her other half. The creation process for this one is included below.

It was the first time I worked with a 6-angled construction, which was specially challenging.

Starting with the fine areas

First color completed

All color completed, before outlining, which I had to do freehand as finding the circle centers again was too difficult!

Sukun (Stillness)

2011-12-20T08:29:00.000+02:00

A friend wanted a piece for her TaijiQuan studio. She left it to me to pick an appropriate word, and what came to mind what Sukun سكون, meaning "stillness", the central purpose of this Chinese art.

I knew I wanted the dot of the ن to be the heart of the composition, and searched along those lines while sketching for the design:

The final design has uninterrupted curves flowing into each other, branching out and returning.

Completed pencils

Hard to pick up in photos, but there's a subtle hue difference between the center and the periphery. First color applied here.

Step 2 with a small brush

Colors completed, shot in daylight so they're more faithful. Pearl mica is mixed into the paint so the colors can look very dark or very bright depending on the light, a dramatic effect.

Lines added, before applying the silver.

Hayat (Life)

2011-12-02T17:07:00.000+02:00

Hayat حياة is Life, and requires no commentary... The design is fractal in nature and suggests that Life ranges from infinitely small to infinitely large, and that it will always elude attempts to define where it begins and ends.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

I started working on this and had inked it
before deciding I didn't like it.

The aha! came while in conversation
with an inspiring friend.

I had to color and ink each color before moving on to the next, because my reference points would disappear each time.

Final version... before I remembered I still had to place the dots!

Ghayrat (Jealousy)

2011-11-29T14:24:00.000+02:00

While reading Ansâri's Sad Maydan, I was surprised to find Ghayrat غيرة, Jealousy, listed among the stations. The definition clarified this: "Jealousy is being envious of something you want but do not have, and nothing else can replace it." In and of itself, it often just means treasuring something so much one can't contemplate losing or not having it.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

As is often the case, I was a bit stuck until a dream gave me the solution at bottom right.

Waiting for the glue to dry

All coppered up

Lines before adding the gloss

Adab (Etiquette)

2011-11-23T10:44:00.000+02:00

Adab أدب, taken in its external meaning, refers to an art of courtesy and etiquette that is inexistent in the West and fast fading from the Middle East. Here, however, it refers to inner Adab, which is essentially the contrary of angst: it consists in bearing one's troubles with dignity and accepting them as belonging to Life.

I chose to leave the design colorless because part of this attitude is not to attract attention to it. You don't show that you're nursing your bleeding soul bravely, you just do.

No print yet because I haven't yet decided whether to add the little lines to define the hamza over the alif (أ). Creation process:

Starting with a full grid

The main lines, done in .5 thickness.

Secondary lines in 0.3.

The curves of the letters are inked and those to be gilded done in pencil.

A walk in Kantari

2011-11-20T13:47:00.000+02:00

Ketchup and mustard:

"Religion is forbidden"

(I know the word is deyn, but in this empty context, it reads deen just as well)

Who doesn't love doors?

1/3-2/3 symmetry

Jalal (Majesty)

2011-11-17T09:20:00.000+02:00

Jalal جلال, "majesty", is the complement to Jamal: together they refer to the two aspects of the divine, feminine and masculine, Divine Beauty and Divine Majesty.

Print on Redbubble. Work process:

For utmost accuracy, I started with a full grid and then marked my outline with a darker pencil.

All is filled with a few layers of Ultramarine (mixed with gold mica), a color I love but that is hard work as it's not opaque.

The grid lines allow me to draw the outlines directly: this takes full focus!
I do all the horizontals, then turn the paper 90º and do the new horizontals.

Jamal (Beauty)

2011-11-15T12:04:00.000+02:00

Jamal جمال means "beauty", and is a commonly used word as well as a first name, but my interest in it in this context is due to the pair it forms with Jalal, "majesty": together they refer to the two aspects of God, feminine and masculine, Divine Beauty and Divine Majesty. (The word Jalal is next in line, as might be expected.)

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

First I tried to see if they could be worked together,
but decided to go for a diptych instead.

Jamal didn't come easily. My frustration shows here.

The finished pencils, nice and complex as I like them.

Inking the smaller curves first...

All curves done

Finished inks

Painted in with acrylics into which I mixed some pearl mica again, so there is a shimmer on close-up. I had to redraw the inside lines over the paint before gilding and finishing.

Animal sketches

2011-11-13T15:31:00.000+02:00

The Western Black Rhinoceros was declared extinct this week :( All I could do to say goodbye was make some sketches...

Then I went on to sketch some other animals that have been in my dreams of late: a bear and an anteater.

Ne3mat (Grace)

2011-11-09T09:28:00.000+02:00

Ne3mat نعمة is Grace, and a traditional blessing that calligraphers have been playing with on various objects for hundreds of years. I designed this composition (which is frankly illegible because it's so abstract) for my Christmas cards, and then decided it was worth making into a full-size piece. With this piece I can finish my Sacred Words calendar so that'll be up soon :)

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

(The sketches are missing because I'm not near my scanner, I'll add them later)

Finished pencils

Painting the intersections first (bottom right is still wet!)

Finished watercolors

Last comes the outline work, in gold, before the dots are gilded.

Sirr (Mystery)

2011-11-04T09:32:00.000+02:00

Sirr سرّ is the "mystery", although it also translates as "secret", the third chamber of the heart after Qalb and Ruh. Its color is white, so in this design I was faced with the task of achieving two shades of white, which I did not want to do with pigment (i.e mixing in another color to obtain an off-white). I wanted this effect to be light-based, so I opposed the matte Titanium White with Pearl White. This added a dimensionality that is naturally only really enjoyable when the piece is seen in real life.

This was one of the most time-consuming pieces I've done, what with having to paint 2 coats of white on all 36 units before applying the pearly white! The original is on Fabriano Murillo paper, 360gsm, 50x50cm.

Print available on Redbubble; creation process:

Sirr was one of the first words I studied...

... but it's only recently I figured out what to do with it.

After two layers of paint... You can just see the pencils for the finer details to be done in a fine brush.

First shade of white done!

The line between the two colors is marked with a
dry point. Just visible enough to work.

Pearlescent paint applied. All that remains is to mark the measurements again for the lines to be inked, and the inking.

Sufi

2011-11-01T07:22:00.000+02:00

The word Sufi صوفي was a commission, and the client wanted it to be done solely in black and white.

The usual studies were made until I settled on 2 designs for the client to choose from.

A full square grid to begin with...

Finished pencils

Come rendering time, I had a number of coloring options, as black is simple. Acrylic was the least easy of those options but I wanted its richness. Also, rather than blocking out all the black and then drawing the white lines over it, I decided I wanted to reserve the lines from the start so they would remain the white of the paper. Very risky, but the result would be the ideal treatment, aside from having it silkscreened!

First step: Outlining the piece with a 0.2 pen, reserving 1mm-wide lines.

Close-up showing what would become white lines over black.

Next came very careful coloring, starting with painting black broadly while keeping away from the outlines. On the right you can see how that first passage looked like. Next came a much more careful second coat to opacify the black (left), and treatment of the small corners and dots with two sizes of smaller brushes. You want to be careful what kind of music you listen to for that kind of work!

Qalb (Heart)

2011-10-29T11:39:00.001+03:00

Qalb قلب is the heart. It is the first of the lataif that are usually referred to as "chambers of the heart", though in some systems it is preceded by Nafs, the ego which is the lowest dimension of man. Qalb precedes Ruh and its color is yellow.

Print on Redbubble. Creation process: The word gave me a LOT of trouble for a LONG time, I've been trying to work it out since summer:

Somehow it finally came to me the other day:

A few studies convinced me to soften it, although I liked the fullness of the first one.

Basic lines

Outlines finished in light sienna

Watercolor fill, deliberately pushing the texture

Khatrat (Einfall)

2011-10-29T09:44:00.005+03:00

Einfall is a German word that literally means "in-fall," explained by Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz thus: "It is something which drops into one's head; it falls in.... It is a beautiful word for something that suddenly pops up in consciousness, comes in a flash from the unconscious." This is an exact translation of Khatra خطرة, while the shortest English approximation would be a "passing thought". In Lebanese we say "Khatar 3a balo" meaning "It dropped on his mind."

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

Basic grid

Finished pencils

The watercolor layer before drawing the outlines

The watercolor was mixed with an iridescent medium so it shimmers.
It was my first time trying it out, it may be a bit too iridescent!

Rahbat (Dread)

2011-10-28T11:12:00.001+03:00

Rahbat رهبة is translated as "fright", but "dread" gives a better feel of the word. It is one of 5 maqamât that correspond to different qualities of (sacred) fear: "For gazing towards Pre-eternity makes the heart unsettled and utterly overwhelms a man."

In Sad Maydan Ansari describes them in detail, but in brief:
"[Khawf (fear)] pertains to the repentant.
[Wajal (deep fear)] pertains to worshippers.
[Rahbat (fright)] belongs to the ascetics.
[Ishfaq (apprehension)] is the fear of the gnostic.
[Khushu' (humbleness) is the fear of the sincere."

A print is available on Redbubble. Creative process:

Reducing the letters to squares and triangles allowed for a range of possibilities, but as usual, the simpler the approach the more powerful the design, so I stuck to squares for all but the ra, leavign a space for movement inside.

As I decided to work on black paper, I could have simply drawn red outlines, but I wanted a feel of blacker than black, so the full part were first filled in with acrylic.

Second step (I forgot to take photos after this) was to apply bronze leaf to the inside, then came the outlines in red acrylic with a fine brush.

Shukr (Thanks)

2011-10-22T07:13:00.000+03:00

Shukr شكر means "thanks" (as in daily life "shukran"= "with thanks"). This is a commissioned piece where the word was specifically requested.

As I need to roll and mail it, I used 220g Canson paper, which is the absolute limit of what can be rolled into my mailing tubes without breaking.

With permission, it'd available as a print on Redbubble. Creation process:

I was going in circles a long time before the design came.

Basic grid

Finished pencils

Filling in the acrylics. As the client likes texture, I didn't try to tone it down.

Macro of the surface revealing a special touch: I mixed gold mica pigments into the paint, so the color has a shimmer to it.

Beirut sunset

2011-10-17T18:33:00.000+03:00

Intermission:

Sheikh

2011-10-17T11:16:00.000+03:00

The Sheikh شيخ is the "elder", a leader or teacher. Whatever it may seem from the outside, at the heart of the teacher is an empty space...
This one goes with much love to the links in the chain.

Original on 360g Murillo paper, 50x50 cm.
Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

This design had a difficult birth. At first I thought I had arrived easily at a composition:

The last thumbnail was my original "final".

But when came the time to paint it, it got all messed up. I took that as a clue something wasn't quite right with it yet, and indeed I wasn't fully satisfied with the design. The dots were too prominent, yet couldn't be changed, and the inside measurements were not simple enough. A design can look complex but be based on very simple relationships; the more complicated those relationships, the more we're moving away from the essence of the word that I'm trying to grasp.
For a long time I didn't know what to do, until it occurred to me that I needed to remove the article Al- that I had included in my original design. It was wrong both visually and conceptually.

Top: Interesting but not fitting. Bottom: Removing Al-

And so as if by magic all fell into place... and I found good paper!

Pencils and starting to apply the white (acrylic this time) from the center, with a super fine brush.

Filling the design, using masking tape to define the straight edges. Not necessary, but it allows quick broad strokes.

Three layers of white later, before inking and gilding.

Rabita (Bond)

2011-10-12T10:03:00.000+03:00

The Rabita رابطة is the “tie”, the bond between teacher and disciple. I was hoping for a design that would express the closeness of that relationship and couldn't believe how the letters lent themselves to form such a "geometrically intimate" composition.

A print is available on RedBubble. Creation process:

I found the word very difficult until I got ط and ة to harmonize.

To create symmetry with the other letters, a circular composition was necessary. All this sketching was done at the cafeteria of a comic festival in Algeria!

My AHA! moment. But would it work on paper?

I usually do a computer study before starting construction on paper, but here it was impossible, the design was too complex. I went straight to the final paper, and you can see some imperfections in the pencils where I had to try different things.

Close-up of pencils.

My next difficulty was how to execute it. I wanted it all gold, but covering over all my pencil references would make it impossible to ink. In the end I opted for gilding it in increments.

All inking was done freehand, using the infinitesimal seam between two gilded areas as a guide. I made only one mistake, easily covered up by more gold.

Lightened photo showing the lineart

Baqaa' (Abiding)

2011-10-11T12:28:00.003+03:00

Baqaa' بقاء means "abiding" or "permanency", and is described by the philosopher Ibn Arabi as "life with God, through God, in God, for God.... the summit of the mystical Abodes in the waiting for the Beloved." From Sad Maydan:

"... [over time] attachments will end, means will vanish, customs will be voided, limits will be broken, understandings will be eliminated, history will fade away, allusions are transient, expressions are negated, information will be wiped out, but God eternally exists, and He exists in His eternal Unity."

This was made for a special person who is celebrating his birthday today :)
Print available on RedBubble. Creation process:

Sketching, I'd gotten an interesting degree of abstraction...

... but felt a less avant-garde approach would fit the subject better.

Impossible to shoot pencil on black paper: this is the glue laid down.

Gold leaf applied and cleaned up, then the bronze dots pasted in turn.

All gilding done, time now to carefully ink the lines (using pencil references on the black paper)

Tawba (repentance)

2011-10-02T09:15:00.001+03:00

The dictionary meaning of Tawba توبة is "repentance," but the meaning understood here is "the turning of the heart [to God or Truth]," the very first maqâm and the beginning of any spiritual path.

"Repentance is the signpost on the path, the leader of the kingdom, the key to the treasure, the intermediary that assists you to become united with God, the condition for being accepted to the divine presence, and the secret of all happiness."
-- Sad Maydân translated by Nahid Angha

There is great humility and sincerity that goes with this concept, which is why I envisioned it in pale, transparent tones of blue and silver, which unfortunately don't photograph well. A print is nevertheless available on Redbubble.

The completed pencils

'Ishq (Passion)

2011-09-23T08:23:00.000+03:00

And for my 200th post in this blog...

'Ishq عشق means "passion", but in this context refers more properly to Agapé, divine love.

Actual size 50x50cm, print on Redbubble.

This is the most complex design I've tackled so far, and it has an interesting story:

I was having a hard time finding the composition...

The moment I finalized it, I was unhappy with it.

Then I attended a talk, and the Speaker said in passing
that the rose had become the symbol of divine love...
(yes I was sketching during the lecture)

There was my design!

The baselines...

Completed pencil lines: despite the complexity, they are always designed so nothing is arbitrary. The intersections of certain lines provide the centers for my circle segments, which provide alignments, etc.

The inking begins... The lines look black in the poor photo but they are actually gold.

Finished outlines. I knew I would have to redo them post-coloring.

Coloring completed: the lines are all messed up as expected, and had to be redone before the dots were gilded as a final step.

Ruh (Spirit)

2011-09-21T20:44:00.000+03:00

Ruh روح is the spirit or soul (they're the same word in Arabic). Tradition calls it the "second chamber of the heart", and its color is red.
An image of this design came to me out of nowhere one day, so there is no hesitation in the creation process below, though of course I had to make sure it was feasible first. It reminds me of this quote I've long loved:

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.
~ Gibran Khalil Gibran

Print on Redbubble. Creation process:

I liked this و design, but not the Pacman associations...

Completed baselines.

Inking has begun, more nerve-wrecking than ever.

Finished inks. And ARGH YES THAT'S A MISTAKE RIGHT THERE, at the very last circle I drew a circle in the wrong place!! A reminder that attention can not wander for a second! Mercifully I was able to cover it up with the watercolor...

Shaheed (Witness)

2011-09-20T08:24:00.000+03:00

The Shaheed شهيد is the Witness, where witnessing is defined as observing consciously and without judgement. Many spiritual traditions emphasize the importance of such a way of being present.
This word also means Martyr, originally specifically designating those who die in a state of witnessing. Sadly only a degenerate understanding of the meaning "martyr" is remembered nowadays in the Arabic-speaking world, and waved around excessively by certain death-worshippers.

A print is available on Redbubble. Creation process:

Reducing the word to a symmetrical unit

I liked the pattern on the right a lot, but when blown up it just looked too simple, something was missing.

The base grid for the final composition. I treat the units as rectangles while working the general composition.

Full pencils. I actually ended up in a trance working on this.

The inked piece (I only remembered to take a photo after I'd started coloring)

Shams

2011-09-18T09:38:00.000+03:00

Homage to Shams Tabrizi, teacher and friend of Jalaluddin Rumi. My calligraphy mentor told me the story of their extraordinary friendship long ago, and the tradition that Shams was killed by Rumi's sons because he spent every moment of his waking life with him. It was his grief over this loss that moved Rumi to write an outpour of what would become the world's most loved poetry.

"Shams" شمس is Arabic for "sun", and it was that image that suddenly hit me. This is a good example of a mostly intuitive design, and one of the most abstract I've done (though the word is there, 8 times)

A print is available on Redbubble. Work process:

I knew what I wanted to do, I just needed to work it out.

The dots of the ش are integrated in the letter as the half-ellipses in the design on the right.

First set of baselines. Those to be later marked were debossed, as were the "dots", because the gold would hide everything.

Guidelines completed...

In this close-up you can just see how my debossed lines show through the gold, allowing me to paint them over freehanded. This is obviously only possible to do on thick paper (anyway I don't recommended using large amounts of gold on thin paper. The glue will make it wobbly.) The outer outline was painted last.

The finished piece under another angle to show the gold's shine.

Hadith (Aphorism)

2011-09-16T09:05:00.000+03:00

From Wikipedia: "In Arabic the word ḥadīth حديث‎ means 'a piece of information conveyed either in a small quantity or large'.... [The term] is used to denote a saying, act or tacit approval, validly or invalidly, ascribed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad."
The composition hints at the fact they have a hidden esoteric meaning that is more precious than the exoteric one.

A print is available on RedBubble. Work process:

Words that fit in a square are good form (no pun intended).


Sorry for ugly – had to really push the levels to show those construction lines.

Here you see the filled squares with the first silver line. Because the blue is opaque, I made grid marks all around each square in order to find the outlines, and that had to be done before filling in the black, which would cover my grid marks.

Sabr (Patience)

2011-09-15T09:08:00.002+03:00

I'm back from a 3-week trip during which I prepared no less than 9 studies for new calligraphy pieces. This first one, Sabr صبر means Patience. Other than being a well-known quality, it is a Sufi maqâm (station on the path).
As usual, this is done on 50x50cm, 300g Cotman watercolor paper.A print is available on Redbubble.

The art process follows:

The "knot" idea was there from the start.

After laying down a grid with a 2H lead, I darkened my actual lines with an HB pencil.

Mixing 4 shades of purple that would look "equidistant" when dry was the most delicate part.

The outlines were then redrawn with a silver pen and the dots gilded in silver.

Drawing People ebook

2011-08-26T15:06:00.002+03:00

I have been wanting to redesign the cover for Drawing People, and I've finally done it for the release of this title as an ebook!
For those not familiar, this is my most acclaimed publication so far, collecting all my human tutorials with some added material:

Everything you need to know to draw the human figure in all its liveliness and diversity, illustrated in full color. Chapters:
- Introduction: Cultivating Your Drawing Skills
- Drawing the body (comparative face and body anatomy for men and women, muscle diagrams, hands and feet, notes on balance and foreshortening)
- Emotions and facial expressions (a study of a sample of 60 expressions with additional notes on posture, etc.)
- Flexibility (understand how and where the body bends)
- Aging the face and body, detailed for men and women
- Catalog of human features (eye/hair/skin color, nose/eyebrow/eye/breast shapes, body types)
- Guide to human types (detailed anatomic and facial characteristics of over 50 ethnotypes, from Ainu to Zulu, with notes on mixed types – the only such guide in existence)

If you've bought the book before, don't worry: the edits are mostly cosmetic and the cover redesign is the biggest thing.

Get the book!

Get the ebook!

Beit el-Hobb (House of Love)

2011-08-18T12:01:00.000+03:00

This is a present for a friend in London I'll be visiting soon. As his house is always open for us to stay as long as we like, we started calling it the House of Love and it stuck. So this is بيت الحبّ for my next visit!
It's been cloudy so the picture is a bit poor; the paper is actually cream-colored.

Commission

2011-08-11T11:44:00.000+03:00

This was a calligraphy job which I show with permission. The client wanted a composition of her father's name, as a gift to him to be hung in his office.

After doing some studies I sent her a few computer-generated options:

The very last one (bottom right) was only meant to explain the design (bottom left), but as often happens, this was the one she liked best ;)

The work process started with mixing and testing colors. I'm often limited by things one wouldn't expect, for instance there are only one or two hues of blue, in any given acrylic range, that are opaque, and they were neither dark enough or regal enough for my purposes. Most blues are transparent, requiring several layers for a clean flat color result, and as a rule, if you can't achieve it with one layer, it will be a major headache and risky to boot. I opted fr a semi-transparent Phthalocyanine Blue and hoped for the best. In any case the two tints of the inner bands would definitely be opaque thanks to the addition of white.

Second risk I took: use masking tape to be able to work fast and still achieve crisp straight edges. My first attempt tore out the paper as I feared and I had to start over. I decided to risk it again, but to place the tape much more lightly and to remove it as soon as the color was down, as the dry acrylic seemed more responsible for the tearing than the tape itself.
By the way, that promising-looking big flat brush on the right, that I had bought the same day? Rubbish. The bristles were falling out in great chunks right as I was painting, so it went straight to the bin.

My second attempt made it to the second step. I was worried about what the tape might do to the first layer of acrylic, especially because I had to cut some of the tape in place to follow the shape, but all went well.

As expected, the final layer, for which I used the pure blue out of the tube, took 2 coats to look decent. I didn't try to do more so that it wouldn't be too dark, and also because the golden outlines that would finish the piece would pull the color together. Also, if you're doing something by hand, you don't want it to look like it was printed. If I want perfectly flat colors, I use silkscreen1

Finished flats before gold outlines; you can just make out some pencil lines where I drew the guidelines over the acrylics.

Fanaa (Extinction)

2011-08-09T15:36:00.001+03:00

Fanâ' or Fanaa فناء is the Sufi concept of extinction or self-annihilation, equivalent to Buddhist nirvana, that is also known as "death before dying".
The photo renders the original as well as possible, given the unusual materials it is made of: silver leaf in the center, then progressively more transparent degrees of silver, a logically impossible feat achieved by the use of clever metallic rub-ons as you will see below.

While sketching to find the essence of the word, I realized that if I stripped the letters down to their simplest possible square expression, each was exactly half the preceding one, so that the word acted out what it spelled out. You can see what I mean in this animation:

This astonishing discovery became the basis of my design, which both rotates like a vortex and is "extinguished" into black

A digital version (available as a print here) was actually completed two months ago, but I took all this time to think of how to adapt it on white. Finally I gave up, it really had to be on black, and started looking for black paper, and completely failed to find black paper of a similar quality and weightto the one I was using– curse our limited market. In the end I had to be content with a modest Canson.

The amount of work it took to construct the design on black is best left without comment.

Silver leaf in the center. Shown here is the fun stage where the excess leaf is rubbed away, revealing the clean design.

A mask cut into acetate was used to rub the pigment on the pattern with the sponge seen at the top.

The completed pattern before outlining the letter shapes

Closer view of the final result.

Hiya (She)

2011-08-03T14:52:00.001+03:00

Sometime last year I felt inspired to make a composition around the word Hiya هي, She or Her. I had a general idea of what it should look like, but found it very difficult to translate on paper, and as I was getting nowhere I left it aside and the motivation passed. Yesterday, an art gallery contacted me, saying they were having an exhibit on Woman in Art and did I have a painting or photo on that theme to contribute? I said that I had a calligraphic piece in mind, actually, and they were interested. But I had to hand it in framed and all by the end of the week, so I had to create it right now! Which miraculously I did as the design "unblocked" and I spent all afternoon yesterday and all morning today drawing and coloring it.

This piece is packed with symbolism, which I explain in detail at the bottom of this post after my work process.

Sketches I made last year

Trying again yesterday, but its complexity required going to the computer

I printed out my "sketch" and noted measurements on it to consult while I worked, as there was so much to remember.

Completed construction lines. I had to darken the photo a lot, that's my lens cover on the right.

Outlines completed in silver! Coloring took so much focus I forgot to photograph the remaining steps.

Symbolism in Hiya:

My measurements are never arbitrary on these pieces, because I learned with experience that geometry is just numbers made visible on a flat plane, so it's by using numbers that form harmonious relationships that you end up with a harmonious design. Aside from measurements, the base number I choose (how many times the motif is repeated) is often symbolic. Here 5 was a must as it's the number of the Feminine. Not only is it the base number, and the paper size is 55cm, but the whole composition is built on 3 circles of 40 cm (5x8, the number of completion), 25cm (5x5) and 15cm (5x3, which is also strongly associated with women). Other than circles, which need no comment, shapes used are the vesica piscis and the lunar crescent (though I only noticed that one in retrospect). That the whole thing looks like a flower is no accident either. There's one additional touch already evoked in Shawq, but I'll leave that one to be guessed ;)

New publication: Guide to Cats

2011-08-01T08:08:00.002+03:00

I'm excited to release yet another book in my tutorial series. Guide to Cats collects all my cat charts, an exhaustive visual guide to big and small cat species, housecat breeds and the colors and patterns chart. In total, 78 pages, and it's available both as a handy coil-bound workbook, and an ebook.

Get the book!

Get the ebook!

I was unwilling to make my tutorials available as PDFs for years because it's so easy for someone to resell or redistribute them. I even found some of my books uploaded to download sites, God knows how since they only existed as hard copies. So I'm testing this one a bit, if you buy it do me a favor and don't share it beyond your household... Don't send it to friends who may feel it's ok to share it further, etc. If I don't get screwed over with this one, you may see my other tuts available digitally as well, possibly including a megacompilation. Why this is desirable, other than the practical aspect of it, is that if I make later corrections or small additions, the revised edition can be made available for free to all those who had bought it previously. So help me out with this! And thanks :)

Wujud (being found)

2011-07-29T18:23:00.000+03:00

From wikipedia: Although wujūd وجود is usually translated as "existence, presence, being"... "its original meaning is the "being found". This "being found" is sometimes described as the final stage of fanaa in which one is immersed in the existence or finding of God while all else is annihilated."

Materials: Acrylics and gilding on 300g Cotman paper. The total paper size is 50x50cm.
Part of my ongoing series. Originals will be available for sale once completed.

I actually completed this in a single sitting, despite the design that was more complex than usual. It's not quite as complex as it seems, though, as all measurements are related. There is numerology within the geometry!

I had been seeking a design for this word for a while, but it came to me the other day while I was waiting for my TaijiQuan class to start.

After sketching and finalizing the geometrics on Illustrator, I start with the construction lines

... which quickly start deviating and requiring all my focus.

I started by inking the straight lines, because they are... straightforward.

I figured out how to attach an ink pen to my protractor, making this possible but completely nerve-wrecking

No less nerve-wrecking, the coloring... Fine areas were left for a smaller brush.

Allah (God)

2011-07-25T08:30:00.001+03:00

The master with whom I work has a particular interest in the word Allah الّله (which is the Arabic word for God, and not, as the misconception goes, the god of Islam exclusively), and together we have painted and gilded dozens of different designs fitting it into a perfect square. Myself, I lean towards circles and mandalas, and so this came to mind while I was waiting for a friend in a Highgate café.

Materials: Ecoline and gilding on 300g Cotman paper. The total paper size is 50x50cm.
Part of my ongoing series. Originals will be available for sale once completed.

It's very hard to photograph gold leaf, so here's another picture under a different light to show how the effect can vary:

Design and work process:

Knowing my construction lines would be covered in gold leaf, I debossed them using my finest burnisher so that I'd have a reference to ink them afterwards.

Applying the gold to the pasted design. Not fun to do in summer because all windows must be closed!

Cleaned up and inked, awaiting the ultramarine fills.

Khidr (the Green One)

2011-07-22T14:14:00.000+03:00

Materials: watercolor, silver leaf and gel pen on 300g Cotman paper. The total paper size is 50x50cm.
The choice of green is obvious, but the reason I went for silver, rather than gold, is that as a hidden, initiatic figure, Khidr has a lunar quality rather than solar.

Al-Khidr الخضر, "the green one" is a mythical figure of Islam loosely situated as contemporary of Moses. In Lebanese folklore he's sometimes identified with St George, the patron of Beirut. Two points about Khidr, the fact he lives "where the two seas meet" and he is referred to as the wisest man, indicate that as a mythological figure he descends straight from the Canaanite god El, and beyond him to the Mesopotamian Ea, both of which lived at the meeting of the two seas in the Underworld and were called wisest of the wise.

Be that as it may, Khidr's role as initiator of prophets and archetypical wali (Sufi saint) is best known from this story told in the Qur'an:

At the place where the two seas meet, Moses met Khidr, one whom Allâh had given knowledge of Himself. Moses asked Khidr, “May I follow you so that you may guide me by that which you have been taught?”
“You will not be able to bear with me,” Khidr replied. “For how can you bear with that which is beyond your knowledge?”
Moses said, “If Allâh wills you will find me patient; I shall not disobey you in anything.”
Khidr said, “If you want to follow me, you must not ask any questions about anything, until I myself speak to you about it.”
The two set out. They embarked on a ship and immediately Khidr bored a hole in the
bottom of the ship.
“What a strange thing you have done!” exclaimed Moses. “Have you bored a hole in order
to drown the ship’s passengers?”
“Did I not tell you,” he replied, “that you would not bear with me?”
“Pardon my forgetfulness,” said Moses. “Do not be angry with me because of this.”
They continued on their journey until they met a young man. Moses’ companion killed this young man, and Moses said: “You have killed an innocent man who has done nothing wrong. You have committed a wicked crime.”
“Did I not tell you,” Khidr replied, “that you would not bear with me?”
Moses said: “If I ever question you again, abandon me; for then I would have deserved it.”
They journeyed on until they came to a certain city. They asked the people for some
food, but these people would not receive them as guests. Finding a wall on the point of falling down, Moses’ companion repaired it. Moses said to his companion, “If you had wanted, you could have asked payment for your work.”
“The time has now come when we must separate,” said Khidr. “But first I will explain to
you the meaning of those acts which you could not bear to watch with patience.
“The ship belonged to some poor fishermen. I damaged it because if it had gone to sea it
would have been captured by a king who was seizing every boat by force.
“The young man was a criminal, who would have committed many crimes that would have brought sorrow to many people, including his parents.
“As for the wall, it belonged to two orphaned boys in the city whose father was an honest
man. Beneath the wall their treasure is buried. Allâh decreed in his mercy that they should dig out this treasure when they grew to manhood. What I did was not by my own will.
“That is the meaning of my acts which you could not bear to watch with patience."

I sketched and finalized the design, while waiting to board my plane at Heathrow:

I was originally just going with Khidr, but I added Al- in order to create the enclosing circle.

Pushing my protractor to the limit, as usual.

Watercolor done. All that was left to do now was gilding the dots and adding the silver lines (the circles are done freehand.)

Tutorials on a roll!

2011-07-21T07:18:00.000+03:00

It's not every day I churn out TWO big tutorials in the same week! Those who have been waiting for me to complete the cat breeds will be pleased: here it is, finally, the last 12 breeds, previewed below:

With that my guides to ALL cat species, breeds and colors are complete, and without waiting to complete the drawing instructions chapter (they may take a long while yet), I'm going to make them available as a book both in print and as eBook – alone they represent about 78 pages! I will blog when they're ready but if you want to make sure to be notified let me know.

In addition, I've been saying for a while that my horse tutorial needed serious revision, but I kept what I was working on under wraps. Finally I can present my Guide to Horse Colors and Patterns! As usual with my charts, it is the most complete guide you will ever find in a single picture, or poster, already available on Redbubble.

I wonder what's next...

Not-so-business cards

2011-07-20T12:38:00.000+03:00

I just got my "business" cards from Moo.com and I really wanted to show them off!

A couple of months ago I unexpectedly won a 50 rounded-edge cards pack in a mini-contest with Moo, and since they allow up to 50 different designs on the back of the cards, I decided to have a blast! Each card showcases a single icon of mine from my latest and favorite sets. The box is a chocolate tin I'd bought in Bristol and kept specially for this – it's too tight for regular cards, but JUST right for rounded edges!

I can't recommend Moo enough, I've been thrilled with everything I printed with them, it delivers safely to Lebanon, and they're uniquely friendly and fun. Check them out!

Wajd (Ecstasy)

2011-07-19T10:42:00.000+03:00

Another suggestion to me was Wajd وجد which can be translated as "ecstasy". The design provides a swirl of patterns that appear the longer you contemplate it, with the dots seeming to dance over the paper from which they are separated by their metallic sheen. 64 instance of "wajd" and many hours of work!

Materials are acrylic and gouache paints, ink pens and gold/silver leaf over heavy-duty, 300g Cotman paper. The total paper size is 50x50cm.

Right now I want to complete a series of 8-10 related designs, originals will be put up for sale afterwards. A print is already available on RedBubble.

I invite you to share my work process below, starting with the quest for the design. I found these wonderful Whiteliner notepads in London that offer a non-intrusive grid to work with.

The pencils are down, starting on the inks very methodically. It takes one misplaced line to ruin all.

Inks completed safely!

Laying down the colors did not go without mishaps. Saved it by the skin of the teeth, so to speak.

Final touch before varnishing: applying glue to the dots, one by one, then gold/silver leaf (and getting it all over myself)

I already have another piece in an advanced stage of completion, stay tuned...

Shawq (Longing)

2011-06-17T12:58:00.001+03:00

I wanted to work on more calligraphy, and the word: شوق Shawq, or Longing, was suggested to me. It turned out to be quite a challenge. It doesn't offer much to work with, and forces its dots upon you because it would be too easy to misread it as Souq (bazaar) without them. It called for a cursive solution, but my training is with the geometric Kufi, so I was leaning towards a geometric solution, particularly one I could arrange in a circle, which is my current shtick. As that took me quite a bit of exploration, I share here the full sketching process:

The final solution was a sudden click: by the end of the study I knew I wanted to open up the Qaf and gild the space inside to symbolize potential, but I had almost given up when the egg shape came to mind, a perfect expression of the pregnancy of Longing.
Then the 3-circle design fell into place, nicely mirrored by the dots on the ش, and the circular arrangement called for itself.

I haven't yet decided if I want to sell the original, or make prints and sell those, but please contact me if interested. This piece is 50x50cm.

1 down...

2011-05-18T15:29:00.000+03:00

... 39 to go! There is hope for my kimono kids yet...

Symphony of Stones

2011-05-16T06:10:00.001+03:00

From the Hellenistic site of Garni in Armenia, one can look down into the valley and see the following interesting columnar basalt formations:

What I didn't know was that there was a way down into it, and our friends surprised us with it, taking us down worryingly winding paths (10 of us crammed into a 4x4) until we were treated to these amazing sights. The sign said "Symphony of Stones"...

Another Tripoli sneak peek

2011-05-11T16:07:00.000+03:00

Spent much of my transit at Sheremetyevo airport working on this (oh the joys of laptops and portable tablets). I like this image, I might use it as the cover...

Easter randomness

2011-04-23T17:32:00.000+03:00

Done for this idea by Rougeatre: Coloring Janerek for Easter.

Happy Easter all!

Dhikr silkscreens, limited edition

2011-04-15T08:28:00.005+03:00

I've been wanting to silkscreen some of my calligraphy designs for a while. I finally tried it with my Dhikr design, which you see here printed onto black paper with a finesse I didn't think possible. Two versions are available (while the limited run lasts):

Ivory

Ivory on black Tiziano paper, 160g, 40% cotton, 50x50cm.

Limited to 21 prints, signed and numbered (19 remaining)

Price: $90 + $10 shipping.

Ivory and Gold

Ivory on black Tiziano paper, 160g, 40% cotton, 50x50cm.

Gold or bronze leaf (as requested) added by hand and varnished.

Limited to 7 prints, signed and numbered (6 remaining)

Price: $150 + $10 shipping.

Ivory and Bronze

To order, please send the appropriate amount by paypal to the address below, and if you've picked the gilded option, specify if you want gold or bronze leaf. Thanks!

65 Classic Cocktails

2011-03-29T08:02:00.001+03:00

I'm soooooo pleased I finally completed this project! I started it in... 2007. It was interrupted and I never recovered the momentum for it, until a few days ago. Enjoy these without moderation, but please don't take them as a celebration of irresponsible drinking! (I don't drink, myself)

I realize of course there are many, many more cocktails out there, but in order to limit the set to a realistic number, I went by the official cocktails list of the International Bartender Association, which comprises the 65 "classics" above. I'm not excluding a "65 Creative Cocktails" collection in the future so if you don't see your favorite drink up there feel free to suggest it ;)

You can download the icon set here, buy the poster here, and I'm slowly posting recipes for all these in the form of fridge magnets. I probably should come up with some t-shirt designs, too... Always open to ideas!

Sneak peeks: Tripoli

2011-03-24T09:31:00.002+02:00

Some rough sketches of our upcoming book on Tripoli, which I'm working on right now. (They're small on purpose)

And while I'm at it, just two very random shots from our daytrip there last week:

For Japan

2011-03-20T16:37:00.004+02:00

I made this for Des images pour le Japon, an initiative collecting art that will be sold and collected into a book, the benefits of which will help tsunami victims in Japan.
Critiques, if any, are appreciated before I send them the final image... Thanks!
You can help by participating or passing the link around artist friends.

Edit: Here's version 2!

And version 3, the final:

Best of Tanzania

2011-03-07T08:28:00.001+02:00

These are my very favorites from this trip. Click to see them in their full-sized glory.
This ends my series on our Tanzania trip, thanks for coming along for the ride!

Enormous Affection

A close-up on those touching facial expressions...

Mass

Tease

بالطول وبالعرض

It's wet!

Lordly

Predator

Pride on the move

Windy day in Zanzibar


The road to school

Tanzania U to Z

2011-03-01T08:00:00.001+02:00

Previous posts:
Agama to Elephant
Flamingo to Kori
Leopard to Lion
Marshall Eagle to Topi

UNIDENTIFIED

I'm really not sure what these are, but I like their style!

VERVET MONKEY

This is the little rascal that jumped into the jeep between my brother and me, feeding me a faceful of fur in the process, to grab our biscuits and jump back out before anyone could react (except the fur-fed party, who let out an indistinct yelp attempting to condense "We have a monkey in the backseat!" in a single syllable.)

Look at him cleaning out the last crumb from the package... (Rest assured we picked up his litter when they scampered off)

WARTHOG

Pumbaa! So ugly they're adorable. Especially when they trot away prudently with their kids in tow, all their little tails held straight up. The male below was not interested in moving away though... If I had 4 tusks this size, I wouldn't move either. Yes he's kneeling – apparently there's a glitch in their design whereas they can't lower their head enough to eat short grass comfortably.

WATERBUCK

WILDEBEEST

Their other name, gnu, suits them better, because that's all we could hear all day: "Gnu! Gnu? GNU?!"

Despite their bovine appearance, they are an antelope, one of the largest species and, all hands down, the most numerous antelope in Africa, with 1.5 million of them in Serengeti (for a total of 5 million animals – I assume that number is for the large mammals or something.) We have observed, first hand, the secret to their success...

It's a classic African savannah postcard: wildebeest at the waterhole. We were excited at the sight and drove closer as the track swung close to it.

When suddenly...

We thought we'd scared them, but to our relief they came back despite our presence.

For about 10 seconds, and then...

WTF? Eventually we realized they're simply, to say the least, high-strung. They'll come to the water, then those in front would be startled by those coming up in the back, and start running back out, startling the latecomers in turn, and the entire group would therefore be running back and forth repeatedly. We couldn't stop laughing as the scene looked something like this:

It was absolutely hilarious to see a gnu jumping in the water and scaring all the other gnus, every time. After the first couple of times, the zebras decided to just ignore the others and keep drinking! Now you know why they're thriving – they run from their own shadow.

Almost caught it, this is too cute: a zebra foal playing with a baby gnu. The adults never seem to interact.

ZEBRA

It's impossible to get tired of zebras, they're one of the most photogenic animals anywhere. They also go about in impressive herds, we've seen some that stretched over a couple of miles easily.

Cutest of all was this foal who was very nervous about crossing the water...

"Must I really, Mom?"

"Aww, man..."

"OMG it's wet! WET!" Nooooo!"

Next and last post: Best of Tanzania photos

Tanzania M to T

2011-02-28T11:00:00.004+02:00

Previous posts:
Agama to Elephant
Flamingo to Kori
Leopard to Lion

MARSHALL EAGLE

OSTRICH

BLACK RHINO

Very very rare and we only saw it from a distance (just as well: they're irritable) but we were lucky to do even that. There are about 14 left in Ngorongoro and they're still poached throughout the continent for their horn.

SADDLEBILL STORK

SECRETARY BIRD

Actually a type of snake-eating eagle, we fell in love with its unusual look! It's named after the black feathers on its head, that look like pens stuck behind the ear.

SOME KIND OF STARLING

I didn't catch the name, but these gorgeous little birds were everywhere, glittering like scarabs. It's really hard to show how shiny and iridescent they are in photos, much less in drawing!

TAWNY EAGLE

I mentioned picnic-threatening eagles earlier on: these are it. You really don't want to eat out when a dozen eagles are circling over your head and making tentative swoops.

THOMSON GAZELLE

TOPI

Next: Unidentified to Zebra...

Tanzania L to L

2011-02-27T11:00:00.008+02:00

Previous posts:
Agama to Elephant
Flamingo to Kori

LEOPARD

I would have loved to leave this for the end as it and the lions were the highlights, but, alphabetics...
We weren't supposed to see leopards at all as they're usually nocturnal, and we considered ourselves lucky when on our first day in Serengeti we caught a glimpse of spotted fur in a tree, whose owner was clearly deep in slumber. We were therefore excited when on the second day we spotted (*cough*) more leopard activity: an adult was hoisting a large prey up into a tree (close enough to see, but not to photograph), while her cub was sleeping in another tree:

See it? No? We didn't either, for a bloody long time. Here's a close-up of that first fork:

We got a much better view when he woke up and scampered up into the higher branches where he became completely invisible.
We were in no way prepared for another leopard alert, especially this one.

He (or she) was small, but supremely indifferent to the many jeeps that were crowding the track tryign to get a loo at him, and quite intent on staying on the track as he carried his prey somewhere he could eat it. Not a single sign of annoyance or alarm, we could have been bits of mist as far as he cared, to the point he walked right under a jeep at one point without showing any sign of having noticed it.

The most beautiful thing I've ever seen in motion...

LION

Funny that we never use that word during the trip, we picked up on simba and it stuck. Well, there was plenty of simba to go around. In fact the lions went in a crescendo from our first sighting in Manyara to the last in Ngorongoro.
When we came across lions in the grass in Serengeti, we waited to see if they would come out to cross to the shade of the trees behind us. As they did, we were able to count them... 3, 4, 5, 6... 17 lions!! Lionesses and cubs, in fact.

They indeed crossed the road and two of the lionesses climbed into the tree, leaving the others almost completely hidden at the foot of it – jeeps that arrived at this point could not see any sign that there were 15 more lions there, so we were again lucky with timing.

I pushed the contrast so we'd see the lion that was otherwise hidden in shadow, but we were as happy as could be, having heard much of the tree-climbing lions of the area. Look at her, a big cat if there ever was one.

I thought 17 lions could be beat, but Ngorongoro proved me wrong. For one thing, it provided us with male lions, for another, they were awfully close.

(Favorite activity)

Thisis where it got too hard to shoot them because they were so damn close they didn't fit in the viewfinder anymore, but of course that's the moment where you're frantically taking photos anyway because you might be too tempted to reach out and touch it otherwise.

"Jeeps? What jeeps? I don't see anything worthy of my attention."

Eventually of course, the lion collapses in the middle of the road and goes back to sleep, leaving the jeeps to find a way around it if they want to get on their way.

Our last lions sighting was very... romantic. A couple of them was sleeping (surprise) by a pond. Suddenly they both raised their heads.

The male went over to the female, te whole thing took about 5 seconds...

And then back to sleep. Life's tough!

Next: Marshall Eagle to Topi...

Tanzania F to K

2011-02-26T11:46:00.002+02:00

Previous post: Agama to Elephant.

FLAMINGO

We didn't get close, but this magical sight greeted us in Ngorongoro. But this is low season for flamingoes: the right time of year, the lake is covered with them. Note the hyenas strolling along, looking for dead birds to clean up.

GIRAFFE

Another classic we can't get tired of. They're so elegant with their long eyelashes and their slow-motion demoiselle walk – they even run in slow motion. Our camp wasn't fenced, and our neighbors found a giraffe browsing outside their tent flap in the morning.

GROUND HORNBILL

Big chicken, that!

GUINEA FOWL

Another bird that gets my creative juices flowing! What perfect lines!

And they're cheeky too, look at these waiting for crumbs at the picnic area. Feeding them is not allowed, but when an eagle scores a hit, they get everything that falls to the ground, as our Canadian friend below found out...

HIPPO

This one is worth a long expose. Our first sight of hippos was at the hippo pool of Lake Manyara, below, where you can also see marabou storks in the background.

Serengeti has plenty of hippo pools as well, and they can get quite crowded. (They usually cohabitate with crocodiles but they don't show well in photos).

While we were observing the above crowd on the left side of the road, there was a lone hippoin the grass on the right side of the road.

In case you weren't aware, the most dangerous animal in all of Africa is the hippo. Is there nothing more dangerous than a hippo? Actually, there is – a hippo on land when its retreat to the water is cut off. All of which I was well aware of as the first warning came from our large friend.

Who then started coming straight towards us, with the unmistakable desire to get back to his pool.

All the while my brother is speculating about a "hippo-tipping" experiment but there's only 5 of us so I think we'll pass.

Why does a herbivore even need teeth this size??In any case, point taken: a hippo is not to be messed with. Fantastic display of pure mass and short fuse.

HYENA

I don't know why hyenas have a bad rep (ok they do sound like something out of the island of Dr Moreau, which is slightly unsettling when it erupts just outside your tent in the dead of night). They're CUTE (even if you consider them creepy-cute), useful, and if tamed they're as loyal and loving as any dog. I thought it would be difficult to see them as they're mostly nocturnal, but as we found out, that only means they can be spotted sprawled by the road during the day, snoozing and pretending you're not there.

ROCK HYRAX

I was excited to spot this one on the roof of the Serengeti information center, till I noticed 2, 3, 4, 12, 40 more of them running all over the place. Okay.

And as the photos below demonstrate, they're not particularly shy: I was trying to get the one under me to look up for several minutes. "No food for me, no picture!"

IMPALA

The most commonly seen antelope, it's known for its spectacular leaps that can span 13 meters.

BLACK-BACKED JACKALS

Always in pairs, I'm not sure if they stayed away from the jeeps, or from the lions that were right next to the jeeps at the time.

KINGFISHER

Another photo that could have been great :P

KORI BUSTARD

The largest flying bird in Africa.

Tanzania A to E

2011-02-24T17:00:00.007+02:00

To be honest I was a little disappointed with my photos: poor light conditions + telephoto (which loses more light) + my failing camera* mean that many potential great catches turned out blurry. I backup-shot everything I could at the time with my pocket camera, but while its great for architecture, it's just no match for animals in motion in the distance. Still, I have a handful of favourites I will leave for my very last post. For now, here's some fun – rather than taking a chronological approach, I give you an A to Z in several parts of all the wildlife we have encountered. In this post: Agama to Elephant! (Click on any pic to enlarge it)

*Never fear: this won't happen again, as I already have a shiny new DSLR delivered and waiting for me :D

AGAMA

Caught at Naabi Hill, this guy looks for the world like he fell head first into a bucket of paint! We need to discuss color coordination...

ARTIST

I forgot to post those pics with the travel diary, so... Artist at work!

And this is my view as I worked outside our tent in Serengeti. Needless to say, I could only work as long as there was light!

BABOON

While not the most endearing of monkeys, likely because they're too human in behavior for our taste, the baboons were rather impressive, especially when a troupe of a few dozen individuals was messing about in a river or walking in a single file on the roadside.

This guy was getting his foot groomed by a young'un. The close-up would have been a great shot if it hadn't come out blurry *pout*.

BUFFALO

They are as dark as their temper. Buffaloes are among the most dangerous animals of the African wilds, as they can attack without provocation. Even lions stay well away from them, and that's saying something.

BUSHBUCK

CHEETAH

We were so lucky to sight this beauty. We had her on our list of things we were hoping to see, especially after getting all the other felines we could want, and on the last day, after a n exchange on the car radio, our guide Freddy informed us with a grin we were going to see the cheetah now. WOOHOO!

Not visible in the shot is a wildebeest that was only a few meters away, standing very still and keeping a nervous eye on the cat. Not that a cheetah could ever bring down a wildebeest, they're so small! Their lean silhouette makes the look larger than they are in reality.

CROWNED CRANES

I was so excited to see these stunning birds...

DIK-DIK

One of the smallest antelope species, it is literally the size of a poodle. I could have stuffed it in my backpack and made a run for it.

ELEPHANT

I adore elephants. I've felt a bond with these magnificent giants since I was 6 and I had my first encounter. So don't be surprised if I bomb you with elephant photos below.

Elephants are matriarchal, and every herd we encountered was led by an old female. They also have a "godmother" system wherein every elephant cub is taken care of both by its mother and by another female. If something happens to the mother, the "godmother" adopts the cub.

I'm SO GUTTED this photo is blurry :.(

They're not just intelligent, their displays of affection are simply stunning in how much feeling they betray, even between friends like these two young males, who spent a long time cuddling each other.

Our last elephant sighting was this very, very old solitary female, browsing by the road near our lodge in Ngorogoro... She even waved hi as she walked by.

Tomorrow: Flamingo to Kori...

Tanzania: Panoramics

2011-02-24T12:30:00.012+02:00

I have to admit I went a little panoramic-crazy during this trip. The wide spaces of Tanzania are really something you want to remember, though you can only capture a pale memory on screen. Here are the better ones of the lot. Don't mind the poor stitching, they're poor photos to begin with.

Lake Manyara National Park...

The area of Karatu, northwest of Lake Manyara, is striking by its fertile, red earth:

Naabi Hill, official entrance to Serengeti, although it's 18 km inside the park:

A 360º shot of Serengeti.... The vastness of the empty plain was incredibly fascinating.

On the way from Serengeti to Ngorongoro: Olduvai Gorge, where the oldest known hominid remains were found (older than Lucy, and they're still digging!)

Looking down into Ngorongoro crater, a 10-km-wide caldera that is now a bowl teeming with ultra-protected wildlife, a veritable garden of Eden! The drive down into it is simply unforgettable....

The crater again seen from the entrance point (only one entry point, only one exit point). We were lucky to have good weather that day, because that very evening it started raining, raining, an endless waterfall of water that hadn't stopped when we left for the city the next day...

The view from our room in Rhino Lodge, on the crest of the crater. Here there be wild beasts at night (there was an elephant right around the corner, for one thing)

We now jump to Zanzibar, the beach by the resort on the northeast coast of the island...

More photos starting in my next post!

Baklawa & Halawa

2011-02-24T08:23:00.011+02:00

After La Pâtisserie, I was eager to tackle Middle-Eastern sweets again, as my original "Arabic Sweets" icon set of 2002 was no longer up to scratch in my eyes. So I bring you a new collection of sweet pastries and desserts from Lebanon and the region.

Below is a brief description of each, as far as I could make them because I haven't tasted all of these!

Asabeh: "Fingers", crispy paste rolled over a stuffing.
Atayef: Sweet crepe filled with cheese or nuts, served with 'atr (sugar syrup with orange blossom water), usually during Ramadan.
Baklawa: The generic, layered pastry, with chopped nuts , soaked with 'atr.
Barazek:Flat pistachio and sesame cookies.
Barma: "Roll", shredded wheat rolled around a stuffing.
Basma: "Smile", square semolina pastries stuffed with nuts.
Bellawrieh:Square pastry made of a fibrous wheat paste, stuffed with pistachios and soaked in 'atr.
Faysalieh: A triangle of pastry stuffed with pistachios.
Ghazel banet: "Flirtation of girls", cotton candy
Ghoraybeh: Lebanese shortbread cookie made simply with flour and sugar.
Halawet el jibn: Lebanese dessert made of cheese dough, ashta (a thick clotted cream) and rose jam.
Halawet el rizz: Rice mixed with white cheese and sugar, served with ashta.
Hrisseh: A soft, dense Lebanese cake associated with Christian holidays.
Jazarieh: Despite its "carroty" name, it's made of grated candied pumpkin mixed with nuts.
Kallaj: Fried wheat layer filled with ashta, specially served during Ramadan.
Karabij: Shortbread fingers served with a special white cream made of egg whites, 'atr and soapwort.
Kol wa Shkor: "Eat and give thanks", crunchy half-moon-shaped paste filled with pistachios or nuts.
Maakaron:
Maamoul: Shortbread pastries stuffed with pistachios, nuts or dates, molded in characteristic wooden molds. They're associated with religious holidays – Easter or Ramadan. Easter maamouls are made in two shapes: round (stuffed with dates) to symbolize the crown of thorns, and oval (stuffed with nuts or pistachios) to symbolize the sponge Christ was given to quench his thirst.
Maamoul madd: Maamoul prepared in a "spread" and cut up rather than individually molded.
Mafroukeh: A festive dessert recipe, made of layers of semolina, ashta cream and roasted nuts.
Mloukieh: ?
Nabolsieh: Cheese dessert topped with crushed pistachios and 'atr.
Nammoura: Square pieces of golden semolina cake topped with almonds.
Osh el bolbol: "The nightingale's nest".
Osmalieh: Fibrous wheat paste sandwiching ashta cream
Salwa: ?
Sanyoura: A sugar cookie.
Sfouf: A Lebanese cake from almond-semolina flour flavored with turmeric (hence the bright yellow), sugar, and pine nuts.
Sheaibiyat: Triangles of crispy pastry layers filled with ashta.
Taj el malek: "The king's crown", shredded wheat crowns filled with pistachios.
Taj ashta: A "crown" with ashta, a thick clotted cream.
Tamara: ?
Ward el Sham: "The Rose of Damascus", ashta between two layers of crispy phyllo dough.
Znoud el sitt: "The lady's arms"

Recurring ingredients:
Fostoq: pistachio
Snobar: pine nut
Tamar: date
Joz: Walnut

Please tweet or share if you like them :) Products available at the moment:

• Posters from RedBubble: There's an English version and an Arabic one (if you're in Lebanon, or insist on dealing with me directly, contact me, I can print it locally)

• T-shirts, bags, iphone cases and more on Seedlings.

• Free OS icon set! Click here.

• More ideas or requests? Shoot!

Tanzania travel diary

2011-02-19T12:45:00.011+02:00

Our trip to Tanzania was wonderful beyond words. We must have been the luckiest visitors ever, as we had good sighting of every single animal on the list and then some we weren't supposed to see, as well as good weather while on safari and rain while transiting only. Rather than attempt to describe how beautiful the wild is in Serengeti and Ngorongoro, I'll let the images speak for themselves. I'll start posting photos once my films return from the lab on Monday, but in the meanwhile here are extracts from my travel diary. You can read the whole diary, page by page, on my travel diaries page (if you can decipher my handwriting -- bad pen made it very hard to write).

The region around Arusha is Maasai country, and they are to be seen everywhere in their characteristic bright red or purple shukas, never without a long polished stick. They are the only people allowed to live within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (being what's left of their ancestral land).

Our first game drive was in Lake Manyara, where the forest shelters many smaller creatures, from monkeys to antelopes. Below a dik-dik, which is unbelievably small (the size of a poodle), a bushbuck and a waterbuck.

Then the forest gives way to the plains around the lake, and we started seeing some big game. There was a classic moment when my dad sneezed at the same moment an elephant let out a trumpeting call...

... Everyone was confused!

Maasai who can't sustain their traditional way of life often find employment as guards in lodges in the area (but even as far as Zanzibar). It may sound sad, but it really isn't as sad as those villages who have to sell their culture in order to survive, by moving to "cultural villages" where they are on display for tourists.
Besides, I can't think of anyone better suited to guard a place from intruders or wild animals.
On the way to Serengeti, no more forest, only the flattest endless plain you'll ever see, full of gazelles, zebras and interesting birds like this secretary and kori bustard, the largest flying bird in Africa.

Here illustrating the difference in pattern between two subspecies of giraffe...

See this tree?
We stared and stared for a very long time trying to see what the other jeeps said they could see there. And finally we spotted him (no pun intended):

A baby leopard snoozing on a branch, quite safe as it was quite impossible to make out if you didn't know he was there. In the meanwhile his mother was ng a kill in a neighboring tree, an impressive sight even at that distance. Leopards are supposed to be nocturnal and an unlikely sighting. If that's the case, then we were ridiculously lucky, as this was our second sighting... and not the last.

More quick captures: guinea fowls, buffalo and bat-eared fox.

And then there was "the morning of the cats", where in the space of a couple of hours we had an unbelievable lions sighting (you'll have to wait for the pics), a serval cat hunting for snakes (tiny thing!) and THE leopard, carrying his prey to a spot where he could eat it. We've all seen them on tv, but seeing one a few feet away in his own environment is deeply impressive. I'd never realized how truly stunning their coat is.

On the 3rd day we headed back for our last park, Ngorongoro crater, around which the Maasai live.

We stayed 2 nights at Rhino Lodge, which is right in the forest that covers the rim of the crater, with various animals grazing the gardens at night. Right around the corner this huge old mama strolling along... (Elephants are matriarchal, the leader of a herd is always an old female)

Note: throughout the safaris my mom kept asking my brother if he wanted the telephoto. This gave rise to the following gag when we got closer to lions than we ever thought we would:

Ngorongoro has 2 picnic areas where jeeps stop for their lunch break. Our guide Freddy made us eat in the car at the one where we stopped, because it's stalked by dozens of eagles who will swoop on the unwary tourist's lunch. For instance this poor Canadian bloke whose guide only warned to "Watch for the birds"...

We wondered why, if the eagles were an issue, we didn't go to the 2nd picnic area. We found out the reason when we drove through it later.
Incidentally, since I received a faceful of vervet monkey fur, I can say it's really soft. And we retrieved the biscuit foil when he had emptied it of its contents.

After that we just had a day of transiting to Zanzibar, where we indulged in sweet farniente by the sea. The Maasai guards there (out of context, I know!) took great care of their appearance, and this guy was particularly eye-catching with his full beaded ornaments plus hsades and sport shoes: we dubbed him the Rock n'Roll Maasai.

Dragi & Me: the book

2011-02-07T08:50:00.005+02:00

I've been thinking and talking about this since our darling Dragi left us, and I have managed it at last. All the Dragi comics have been reworked in clean lineart, and I also collected all of my best Dragi tweets (my followers can tell you how much I tweeted about him!) into a nice, 54-page handmade souvenir book. The book is A5 in size, printed on coated paper and Japanese stitch-bound.

This isn't all though: I used this project to experiment with e-book publishing, a process I describe in all it painful details below, and as a result it is also available for reading on e-readers (Kindle, Nook, Sony) and digital tablets (iPad, Android...) By this I'm trying to find out how popular these devices are and what the market is for digital comics, so I'm groping a bit in terms of pricing and delivery for now. I have big plans for ~~world domination~~ future publishing if it turns out to be worth it.

How do I get my copy?
The handmade book is $12 including shipping anywhere. ($8 if you pick it up directly)
The e-book is $3 and will be emailed to you. (I'll appreciate it if you don't share it around!)

Please send payment by Paypal to

and make sure to specify what reader you'll be using if you order the e-book.*

*I have the following files: .epub for Nook and iBook, .mobi for Kindle, .lrf for Sony. If you need another kind, contact me, I may be able to convert it for you.

About e-publishing
The long ramble below recounts my adventures in trying to breach the e-book market so far – feel free to skip if you're not that kind of geek.

It first came to my attention that it was possible for everyone to make e-books on a forum I frequent for graphic novel authors. Niki of In Maps and Legends publishes a digital-only comic and shared with us tutorials and templates to convert our own comics into formats compatible with various e-readers.
As described above, I decided to test this with Dragi & Me, which I could prepare quickly in a format that would fit all the major e-readers. The generous margins, simple layout, and grayscale accommodated both for printing/binding and for screens with slight variations.

I quickly discovered that "publishing e-books" consisted in 2 steps that are quasi-independent: making the e-book, and getting it into stores. The one is easy as cake, the other is, as a friend put it, a royal pain in the ass.

I won't go here into the detail of preparing the e-books (I'll provide links to anyone who wishes for a tutorial). Suffice it to say that if you can create an .epub (done with the free software Sigil), you can read the book on Nook and iBook. You can also convert this .epub into .mobi (using the also free software Calibre) so it can be read on Kindle, and into .lrf so it can be read on Sony readers. A .pdf will of course work everywhere, but for a number of reasons it's not the format of choice so I'm not discussing it here.
So basically once you have an .epub and its .mobi and .lrf conversions, you have your book in formats that can be read on all 4 of the best-known e-readers, and many lesser ones.
That was easily done, the next step was to try and get it into stores... This is where it gets absurd.

The web knows no boundaries, but copyrighting laws have not caught up, and as a result e-bookstores are still shackled by the printed book model, i.e different publishers have rights to a title in different countries. Why this has to be imposed on independent authors I don't know, but here are the walls I ran into when I tried to get my book into the various stores. (Bear in mind I'm Lebanese and reside in Lebanon).

For Nook: Barnes & Nobles. I was stopped in my tracks at signup, as you are required to be a US resident with a US taxpayer ID.

For Kindle: Amazon.com. Again, you need a US taxpayer ID. It appears you can get one of those without actually residing in the US, by simply emailing the Ministry, but can someone tell me why I'd want the IRS to have my number??

For iBook on the iPad: the iTunes store. Holy moly. I don't even know what they want, any attempt to get into there as a seller lands you in a maze of pages where you go around in circles. I have not yet found the page where I can sign up for an account to be a seller, so I can't tell you what they'll require of me once I get there. I do know that an ISBN is required – more on that below.

I thought I would be able to get around this when I found that Lulu.com can do the job of distributing your book to all those stores for you. Having a flourishing Lulu account, I'm all too happy to focus all my publications there. But even there, I was stopped by 2 hurdles. First, my .epub upload gets rejected as an invalid file. This even though it was made with their recommended software and verified with their recommended link. I still need to sort that out with them. For now I suspect they may just want people to pay them to do the conversion themselves (ok maybe that's too conspiracytheoristic).
Second hurdle is that again, I need an ISBN for the book to be distributed in the major shops. I can have it on my own Lulu shop without it, but I need to assign an ISBN for anywhere else. ISBNs are usually costly, but on this point, if on no other, I'm damn glad to be in Beirut: in Lebanon they are provided absolutely free upon presenting a request at the Minsitry of Culture. That I will do soon for the dozen or so titles I'm working on (printed and digital), and I'll let you know what happens once you get through the door using the magic number...

The bottom line though is that so far, I have not managed to even sign up for any of these stores. And it's occurred to me that there is no real need to. Being findable on Amazon, iTunes or the like is a plus, yes, especially that your chances of being found increase with their "similar books" features. But setting aside that potential exposure, there's nothing simpler and more universal (and cheaper for everyone) than to just offer the file directly. It also limits the very real risk of your book ending up available in some parts of the world and not others.

In any case, my exploration is ongoing and I'll keep you posted! If you have experiences or tips of your own, please do share...

Skullcandy meets Minifu

2011-01-19T20:28:00.001+02:00

Some time ago the representative of Skullcandy Levant asked me if I'd like to customize a docking station for a promotional contest. I was happy to, this was a fun new challenge and I immediately thought of MiniFu as fitting the Skullcandy style, in my mind.

The graphic at the top was the teaser, and below it is the real thing.

It took several attempts (good thing I had 4 defunct Pipes to experiment on) but eventually I hit upon a way to get these extremely minute figures onto the pipe. I can't remember the name of the paint right now (I'm outside the country so can't go look) but it's craft paint made for cold painting on ceramic, and also works well on metal. Only thinner takes it off!

I don't know yet who the lucky winner is, but I can see myself doing more customizations :D

A day in St Fagan

2011-01-19T10:03:00.004+02:00

Random shots in the open air museum of Welsh History, on a historically cloudless day:

\

... and this one was in Bristol:

Morning Grace

2011-01-09T07:53:00.002+02:00

I don't even remember what I was doing just now, that I dropped altogether to run for the camera when I caught ag limpse of this outside my window. One never gets tired of rainbows.

Of art and violations

2011-01-08T07:19:00.005+02:00

I was visiting the Cedars of Bsharre recently, and at least 2 Israeli planes were very busy violating our airspace, because we heard and saw them all day. This about 150km into our territory. At least I caught some pretty pictures of their antics above the sacred forest.

Maple Red

2010-12-29T09:59:00.008+02:00

... and other (long overdue) photos of autumn in Japan:

(Several of these will be made into prints as soon as I can.)

Another sweet--

2010-12-28T09:50:00.003+02:00

-- I mean, sneak peek. Did I forget anything? ;)

Sneak peek

2010-12-26T19:59:00.003+02:00

The long-promised kimono kids are penciled at last, waiting for inking.

Note: A Japanese colleague kindly pointed out that the absence of feet was characteristic of ghosts, as only brides and actors wear floor-length kimono, so I'm giving them feet in the final version!

Dragi & Me 19

2010-12-12T16:57:00.002+02:00

In loving memory...
It's with great sadness I continue these, especially those prepared when I believed he was recovering from his illness, but they make me feel like e has not gone altogether...

Dragi & Me 18

2010-12-10T17:41:00.002+02:00

Dragi & me 17

2010-12-08T15:28:00.000+02:00

Dragi & Me 16

2010-12-05T19:47:00.001+02:00

a.k.a. The Day Dragi Flew

In love with new shop!

2010-11-27T06:08:00.001+02:00

Passing by quickly to mention that major streamlining is going on in my Cafepress shop, taking down all designs that no longer represent my skills or that I don't really like, and reorganizing the rest. Also I opened a new shop on RedBubble!

I like the site. There are less organization tools so it's less conducive to dumping a load of designs, and the choices of products more limited, but in a sense that makes it much nicer both to browse and to update. The task of customizing shirts and colors is on the shopper, which makes sense, and it's a nice process with a wonderful preview. I also really like their options for prints, a very nice choice that is easy to visualize, and every budget can get something special.
Plus, they offer DIE-CUT STICKERS!!! Which means my icon sets now have a new outlet - Minifu are already up). I nearly fell over when I realized. I'm busy there now buying my own stuff, the kokeshi shirts look sooo cute!

The site also has some really appreciable offers:
- Buying 4 t-shirts gets you free shipping anywhere in the world (yes, including Lebanon, though they only accept Paypal payment from here, which can be a little tricky. But I'm doing a test order, and if it works I can conceivably order myself for whomever wants something)
- When you buy 6 sticker sheets (not necessarily the same), they are all discounted by 50%. So you just pay for 3, basically. That's crazy!

Take a look, this is a real exciting site and they have truly awesome t-shirt/sticker designs there. My shop's still filling up: http://www.redbubble.com/people/cedarseed

Babble babble, back to creating now.

Dragi & Me 15

2010-11-25T15:44:00.001+02:00

Creative Kokeshi & Kimono Designs

2010-11-25T08:11:00.007+02:00

The first of the icon sets I started working on while still in Tokyo, though I wonder if I have it in me to do the others now! Available as products in many forms, see links at the bottom of this post.

Kokeshi are a Japanese folk craft and one of several kinds of dolls known to this culture. Their characteristic is that they are made of wood on a lathe. This particular set showcases types of "creative" kokeshi, which have developed after WW2, as opposed to the 11 types of "traditional" kokeshi (which I intend to treat separately). I started penciling the dolls during my third visit to Tokyo, succumbing at last to an overdose of kawaii.

This, however, is not the sole dimension of this set. The 45 dolls illustrate 45 traditional kimono designs, as listed by Katsumi Yumioka in the beautiful Summer Kimonos and the Colors of Japan. So this avalanche of cuteness is also a cultural document, of sorts. My dolls are named after these traditional motifs:

Ajisai 紫陽花: The hydrangea, considered by samurai to represent glory.
Akikusa 秋草: Autumn flowers, which are 7.
Asagao 朝顔: The morning glory, loved for its flamboyant blossoming that is as sudden as it is brief.
Ashi 葦: The reed, often depicted in waterfront paintings.
Azami 薊: The thistle, which signals the coming of summer.
Bara 薔薇: The (Chinese) rose, seen as a lucky flower promising prosperity.
Bashou 芭蕉 The plantain tree, long admired for its rarity and the sound of rain falling on its leaves.
Budou 葡萄: Grapes, a symbol of fertility and fecundity.
Chidori 千鳥: The plover, evoking a medieval poem.
Fune 舟: A boat, representing forward movement despite obstacles.
Fuyou 芙蓉: The confederate rose, appreciated for the gracefulness of its ephemereal flower.
Hanaguruma 花車: A flower cart, considered to be inhabited by a god's spirit.
Himawari 向日葵: The sunflower, of striking appearance.
Ho-odeki ほおでき: The Japanese lantern plant, which has a long history as a toy, as children make whistles out of it fruits.
Hotaru 蛍: Fireflies, an important element of many legends and stories.
Kaede 楓: The maple leaf, associated with powers of recovery and much contemplated during Momiji, the time of year when the leaves turn red.
Kai 貝: Seashells, which due to their hard shell were associated with protection and often depicted on armor.
Kaichuuzu 海中図: The sea, since the 18th century an inspiration for realistic yet magical udnerwater worlds.
Kanran 甘藍: The ornamental kale, essential for the New Year's holidays as there are no flowers that time of year to provide color.
Kaya 茅: Miscanthus, used for roofing.
Keitou 鶏頭: The celosia, seen as a symbol of social status.
Kingyo 金魚: The goldfish, one of the eight lucky signs of Buddhism.
Koi 鯉: The carp, a symbol of advancement, as the fish are said to jump rapids.
Kujaku 孔雀: The peacock, of divine beauty but furious temperament.
Maru 丸: Circles, which have a wide variety of meanings.
Mizudori 水鳥: Waterfowl, long-time favorite subjects for artists.
Nami 浪 : A wave, symbol of Nature's vitality.
Nami no maru 波の丸: Wave circles, representing the ever-changing shape of the waves.
Natsukusabana 夏草花 Summer flowers.
Ougi 扇: The folding fan, regarded as auspicious and aesthetic.
Ryu-usui 流水: Flowing water, reflecting the fact that all things in life are in a state of flux.
Sakana 魚: Fish, inspired from folk tales of undersea princesses and castles.
Seigaiha 青海波: A wave pattern symbolizing eternal peace and happiness.
Susuki 薄: Japanese pampas grass, whose feathery plumes were believed to be inhabited by the spirit of a god.
Tessen 鉄線: The clematis, with its elegant foreign appearance.
Tokusa 木賊: The scouring rush, an ornamental garden plant.
Tonbo 蜻蛉: The dragonfly, a symbol of victory often depicted on armor as it flies forward only.
Tsubame 燕: The swallow, an auspicious bird for a couple, often depicted in betrothal gifts.
Tsuyushiba 露芝: Dew and grass, depicting the day of white dew, Hakuro, which is on or near September 8.
Uchiwa 団扇: The round fan, believed to be inhabited by a god's spirit.
Usagi 兎: The rabbit, a holy animal in China sinc ethe Han period.
Uzumaki 渦巻: Swirls, inspired by the arrival of the Secession style in Japan.
Yatsuhashi 八橋: The eight-plank bridge, associated with an episode of The Tales of Ise, a poetry anthology of the Heian period.
Youbana 洋花: Flowers native to the West, popular since the 1900 Paris exposition.
Yuri 百合:　The lily, symbolizing prayers for the prosperity of one's descendants.

Please tweet or share if you like them :) Products available at the moment:

• Posters: click here for Romaji (English script), or Kanji. (if you're in Lebanon, or insist on dealing with me directly, contact me, I can print it locally)

• 10 different themed doll sets like the one above, on T-shirts, bags, iphone cases and more: click here to go to my Seedlings shop.

• For those who prefer, some products are also available on RedBubble.

• Free OS icon set! Click here.

• I'm trying to figure out how best to offer them as coloring sheets or a coloring book...

Dragi & Me 14

2010-11-22T15:39:00.001+02:00

Kawagawa

2010-11-21T15:42:00.000+02:00

Impatience

2010-11-20T08:57:00.002+02:00