I was so close to miss this year’s challenge because life commitments have been so extra these days, but here I am again with another challenge for you! As every year, the theme is different, but the essence is the same. This is an opportunity for us to draw and practice painting methods, preferably ones with gilding or illumination techniques. For obvious reasons, I have chosen flowers from Palestine. In fact, these are Wild Flowers of Palestine that were documented by a man of the church who visited Palestine and fell in love with its nature. By the way, if you are not familiar with this ch ..read more

In April 2019, I attended the Botanical Indian Miniature class in the Prince’s School of Traditional Art, PSTA, here in London. I was so excited to finally be able to attend a class about Indian miniature! It is been an area that I wanted to learn about for so long! My main motivation was the botanical subject because as you know I have already attended the Botanical Illustration and Botanical Painting classes earlier this year. I was very eager to see the technique and improve my shading to create better Islamic illuminated patterns with beautifully shaded flowers. The class was taught by Sa ..read more

Ramadan Mubarak everyone!! I am finally excited about this month. I was a little worried and anxious about fasting and my productivity level, but I am really pleased now that it is here and I am ready to make the most of this month God wiling. Being creative is an important part of my mental health and wellbeing. Creating and painting Islamic illumination helps me think and stay calm. The weeks, where I don’t paint, I get easily frustrated and stressed. That is why I want to have a creative Ramadan as well because that will help me soak up the spirituality and the goodness of this month. I ha ..read more

Hi everyone, I am so excited to be bringing you the annual golden flower challenge again! I can’t believe this is our third year doing it together. As you know, I just finished a short botanical illustration and taxonomy class, so I am very excited to put in some of the tips I learnt into practice. The golden flower challenge is a good activity to do together as a creativity community to share this experience and to improve our skills! I will be doing it alongside you as well :) This is going to be a fun way to welcome the upcoming beautiful Spring season with this flower painting challenge! M ..read more

I can’t believe it has been seven years since my conversation with friend Samira Mian about starting this challenge. Indeed where does the time go, but wow, I am happy this has continued and I am looking forward to inshallah making it to the 10th year even!! In all honesty, I have a lot of life things happening at the moment and as I mentioned in the newsletter, I have moved countries yet again and I was so close of taking a pause from this as well, but then I saw the most gorgeous Quran in the Sharjah Museum of Islamic civilisation in their temporary exhibition: Sacred Words: Timeless Callig ..read more

Spring is around the corner and the world is a mess with Covid and the start of war…. sigh, but we shall try to escape for an hour a day to paint flowers, to recharge our energy and to of course practice our skills! 2021 golden flower challenge was really fun and every year, I get to e-meet a lot of talented individuals. By the way, if you are not familiar with this challenge let me tell you more about. This is the Sixth year of the annual challenge and it’s basically a free community activity, where I provide you with flower templates to paint to improve your brush-work skills and colour sel ..read more

I start most of my posts, lessons and talks by pointing out something super important. The term Islamic art is a massive umbrella term, grouping million things under its shadow.  People sometimes come to me wanting to learn “Islamic art” and it is an indication these people have no idea what they want to learn. The first step in learning “Islamic art” is to actually determine the area or style you want to learn. It is like saying you want to learn “art” or “craft”. Imagine saying just that to a person: I want to learn art? The follow up question will be what kind of art and it becomes a m ..read more

It is so good to hear that you are interested learning more about Islamic art and patterns and you have come to the right place. In this post, I will help you find a useful course or workshop for patterns and illumination. The term Islamic art is HUGE and it includes lots of different things. You can listen to the art illuminated podcast episode to understand the definition of Islamic art a little further. First thing you want to determine is which areas would you want to learn within Islamic art and patterns? To help you do that, here are some popular areas of study: Arabic calligraphy P ..read more

Spring is around the corner and although I was hoping that 2021 will be better than last year, but we are still under tight corona restrictions here in the UK. Hopefully things can get better in the summer, but until then, I have you and all these flowers to keep me busy! 2020 golden flower challenge was our biggest one and lots of you were able to participate and I am hoping we can do even more painting this year! I am upping my game this year and instead of tracing flowers by hand, I am tracing them with my ipad and apple pencil on procreate. I am still going to paint them all by hand and a ..read more

You have been asking for all my book recommendations and here is a very detailed list for you with all my favourite books. Try to support your local bookstores by buying them directly from there, or check on eBay or Abelbooks for used copies. Each book includes an affiliate link with Amazon. These book recommendations are based on books I bought and I enjoyed, you might not find every book useful for your purposes, but this is what I wish I found when I started learning about the subject. It is not a complete literature review on the subject, but this will be a very good starting point for yo ..read more