Now this is something I won’t repeat too soon but it was totally worth it. My really good friend is half irish and half iranian. She asked me quite a long time ago if I could create an art piece for her that could represent the two sides of her heritage and family. I was intrigued by the idea, not only because of the challenge to mix 2 such different cultures in an artistic/ visual way, but also because of the rich visual language the two cultures possess.
How could I represent the two equally and in an authentic way, without it becoming kitsch or too overloaded?
After some searching and thinking I decided to settle on the fantastic abstract visual language that both cultures have in common. Pattern design. When I hear “celctic” and “middle-eastern”, in a visual sense I immediately think of the pattern and symbol designs that permeate their whole culture.
To me, this was the ultimate way to blend the two seamlessly and give them both space to be their own at the same time.
After a lot of research I picked patterns and symbols that spoke to me, worked well together and represented themes that I wanted to include as messages to my friend. I loved the process of creating one piece out of many and at the end I realized there were more commonalities than I would have ever guessed. It truly became one blended piece.
I also decided to add a fitting quote into the center to give the piece purpose and to strengthen the message of the artwork and its background. A modern simple font helped ground all the extra decorative artwork surrounding it.
Once the layout and design had been created, I started the real work. Drawing out each pattern design onto a large A2 sized sheet in gold ink pen. By using only one colour, the artwork would become fresh, modern, but also joint. After a while I almost cursed myself for choosing such a large scale, drawing so many patterns took over 20 hours in the end. It was a real strain on my hand, but the result was oh so worth it.
So here it is, all hand drawn in ink pen:
