2D SURFACE DESIGN: ISLAMIC ART!

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Final Islamic Art design featuring Surah Al Ikhlas

INSPIRATION

In order to find ideas for my surface design, I searched for patterns in my everyday life. I found examples in books, posters, decor, bowls and more.

Designs used for general inspiration

I ended up incorporating elements such as floral patterns from the books, poster and bowl, as well as an overall circular design inspired by the sewer cover, bowl and green poster. For the main appearance, however, I followed the white and blue paper’s use of a minimal focus point design.

Louvre Museum

Designs used for Islamic Art inspiration

As I began anazlying designs on a deeper level I knew I wanted to create a piece that follows Islamic art ideaologies and aspirations. Knowing this I decided to look into Islamic art pieces  I saw this summer when I visited the Louvre Museum in France for direct insight. I ended up using also incorporating other elements such as the use of circular following geometric patterns, florals as well as blue hues in my piece.

Research

To gain a better understanding of Islamic Art and its construction I decided to further look into the style by looking into historical designs, patterns and tutorials. During my research, I once again found great use of geometric shapes, blue hues, and floral patterns as well as Arabic calligraphy using chapters from the Quran. Apart from the inspiration, I drew from both my daily life and the Louvre Museum I decided on using Arabic calligraphy of a chapter from the Quran. As there are 114 chapters to use from the Quran I ultimately settled on using a shorter one, Surah Al Ikhlas, so it can fit into my design. Having never done Arabic calligraphy I found an image to use direct reference online in order to make sure I had written the chapter clearly and accurately.

Trial and Error

I spent the majority of my time trying to hatch my design as I had a lot of errors come up and it became extremely frustrating since I followed all the instructions given during my class. I decide to speak to my professor Bryan about the difficulties I was experiencing. He suggested that create completely joined shapes, having none of the pieces interact and turning the design into Make2D. Despite taking extra time to make these changes I was still experiencing a lot of difficulties and errors trying to hatch. My hatches would not work nor layer on top of each other and I ended up having to take the time to hatch every piece individually as well as adjusting my layers in order.

Once that seemed to work I then spent time figuring out how I want to arrange my colours. Here is all the version I made. I ended up settling on the 5th design with some slight adjustments.

Despite all the difficulty I had with creating my piece I'm looking forward to testing laser cutting this design onto a physical piece!