Carlos Neto
Islamic Art
To well understand Islamic art we need to understand the origins of Islam. Islam is a monotheistic religion meaning that muslim people worship only one god. Like all Abrahamic religion Islam has a holy book which is called the Quran. Islam is also the second biggest followed religion with 23% of the world, more than 1.57 Billion followers which are composed by approximately 90% Sunni Muslims and 10% Shia Muslims. Islam is more than a religion, Islam is also a way of living and it also has it's own art and culture which have their origins in the middle east. Islam born due to the fact the people had to know gods wills and sayings through the prophet Mohammed...Mohammed himself was original from Mecca the city that is considered the cradle of Islam. Mecca is located in what is nowadays called Saudi Arabia.
Plant Drawings
In one of my lessons I have done three drawings looking at plants, in different positions and angles. Therefore above I got the two of three samples I did in class one of them is a tonal drawing which have tone in shades of white and black. The other is just a line drawing without tone so it looks a bit more flat. The first drawing took me around 20 minutes to do it and the second drawing around 10 minutes, both of them look amazing but if I had to choose between them I would choose the second one because I really like the compostion of it looks much more like a strucutre of a plant than the first one. Plants are very good sources of inspiration for designs because they are so biodiverse in every single aspect of their structure. Therefore as for instance in the first drawing the composition could have been better planned and that is one of the things I could improve in the future and also another thing is the shading that I have done it could look more realistic but it is looking like that due to the little time I had to finish that drawing.
Floral Patterns
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During the week that I have done the plant drawings I also did the experiments above which are patterns made out off plants, specifically called Floral Patterns. To make them I just used a section of the plant that I liked the most and I sent it to photoshop, in photoshop I coloured it and I made many kinds of repetition as for instance mirror repeat and more. What I like about these technique is the fact that is very unpredictable and the outcome of it is always unique and amazing, specially if we use colours that combine well togheter. In terms of improvement I could have simplified more some of the sections I have chosen basically I could have stylize more the shapes. Overall these experiments are very good visually and I could have further apply them in to a product or a garment.
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Tessellation
A tessellation is a regular pattern made up of flat shapes repeated and joined together without any gaps or overlaps. These shapes do not all need to be the same, but the pattern should repeat. Another word for tessellation is tilling. The designs above are two tessellations that I have done in photoshop. I have used the line tool in photoshop to make the designs above, I really like the colours of my experiments because they relate more to islamic art in general. To improve the designs I could have simplified the shapes more to make them less complex but I still think they are quite amazing.
Pattern Experiments
These experiments are part of a series of more experiments that I have done in class in this special case I was using geometrical shapes to form original and unique designs. Therefore I displayed a square in several angles in order to form the images above which interestingly in the first image I applied cold colours such as shades of blue and in the second experiment I have used a hot colour sucha as red, brown and orange.
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is the art of forming amazingly beautiful symbols which can either be used as writting or for decorative purposes. The most known calligraphy types are the Chinese, Arabic, Latin and Indian. The Chinese combined with the Indian are amongst one of the two most used in the world due to the fact that the population of those countries are huge. Therefore calligraphy is not just decorative art, before the 18 century calligraphy was used mostly for communication purposes but with time some types of calligraphy became archaic and less used. In my own case people get surprised due to the fact the I use calligraphy instead of block standard writting. Normally in England at school teachers teach the block standard writting but in where I'm from (Portugal) in school we first learn calligraphy and after that we are free to choose what type of writting we want to use for the rest of our lives and in my case I have chosen calligraphy because I think it's very beautifl and for me the standard block writting is boring to see.
Calligraphy Experiments
Above I have got my calligraphy experiments that I made in class, the goal of these experiments was to just experiment different strokes and differents types of calligraphy. In my first experiment I tried to mix the alphabet calligraphy with the islamic calligraphy to make something original and unique, it could have been much better in terms of composition and strokes. In the rest of the experiments I just played around and made different things such as repetition of shapes.
Calligraphy Final Pieces
The two images above are two final outcomes that I have done after doing several experiments either by hand and in photoshop about calligraphy. In both designs I have used the same writing I just slightly changed some details, well before that I started by scanning a section of writing which I took from my sckethbook and then I applied colour and visual effects to the images. These final pieces with photoshop went quite well considering the fact that I had little time to produce them. In future designs
Visit to the Mosaic Rooms
During my visit to the Mosaic Rooms I have taken the photographs above which represent 2016 theme which is about story telling. This visit was very good due to the fact that I learned how people, artists and writers tell stories through imagery and through calligraphy. The main story in this year exposition was the story of a camel and a lion and their adventures. In the Mosaic Rooms I have done some drawings of the Lion mask and as well the Camel mask...
Visit to the V&A
During my visit to the V&A I have taken a lot of photographies which we can see a side of this text. The V&A it's one of the best musuem at both international and nacional level because it has gathered a gigantic variety of artifacts which people can see. In this specific visit to the V&A I visited the Islamic section because my theme is about Islamic art. Therefore I took pictures and I also done sketches of what I have seen there. Overall the visit to the V&A was very inspiring because I could see the artifacts with my own eyes and that was even more inspiring for fresh ideas to apply on my work.
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Final Project
My final piece will be a series of leaflets which I will be designing on photoshop and my goal will be to show trends in terms of Islamic architecture around the world. Therefore I will be designing this leaflets which will show where the buildings are located and further information about them. So my first step will be to print off the images of the mosques then after that I will be printing them and trace them by hand with tracing paper and then put them in the scanner and scan them. Once scanned I will be able to further develop them into more complex designs. Although I have got this idea of the leaflets if have extra time i will be also producing a display for my leaflets or a poster to show the same concept of trends around the world.
My chosen Mosques
In order to make my final piece I have chosen 4 of the most beautiful Mosques around the world that I found. I actually found 10 pictures of the internet but I just chose 4 of them which are the one above. They are the Mosque of Qolsharif in Russia first image, Dome of the Rock in Israel second image, Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque Abu Dhabi in the UAE and finally the blue mosque in Turkey.
In my opinion these mosques are very beautiful but my favourite one is the first one because I really like the blue colour
In my opinion these mosques are very beautiful but my favourite one is the first one because I really like the blue colour
Illustration of the Mosques
I have taken a screenshot of the process of transforming the pictures of the mosques into illustrations. To suceed in this I had to first upload the tracings I done previously by hand to photoshop then I used the filter gallery to add a filter effect to the tracing to highlight the black lines in order to make them bolder. Therefore after having my lines bolder I started to paint the empty spaces meanwhile I was also correction some of the lines that did not close with the filter gallery effect. The mosques illustrations started to look better after I have done contrasts with the colours. I really love this technique and I am very excited to apply it further in my future work. In terms of improvement my designs could have been better planned in order to make them look more professional. Overall I learned a lot of new techniques and tricks on photoshop which allowed me to develop my final ideas into actual designs.