(upbeat music)
-: Hi.
I'm Amina.
I'm a visual artist, and I teach Islamic art,
I teach geometric art, and arabesque art.
Arabesque art, also known as bimorphic patterns or Islami,
is an art form that is, unlike geometric art,
it is very organic, has a lot of flowy shapes,
and it has abstracted, floral, and vegetal shapes,
and I'm gonna be teaching you
how to draw some patterns today.
So I'm gonna start off with describing
the three main elements of arabesque art.
The three main elements of arabesque art are the spiral.
The spiral is behind sort of every arabesque motif,
and it acts as sort of the background
in patterns where other motifs sprout out front.
The next element is symmetry and structure.
Most arabesque patterns are symmetrical.
And lastly, rhythm and balance.
All arabesque patterns flow with a sort of rhythm,
and they're balanced
and in the way that they are spread out.
So let's start off with a few drawing exercises.
What I have in front of me is graphing paper,
and this is just gonna help me draw symmetrical motifs.
If you do not have graphing paper,
regular paper will work just fine.
This is just so that we can measure out
and make sure that our motifs are symmetrical.
Next, I have a ruler and some pencils.
We are going to use a softer pencil.
So, one thing when drawing arabesque patterns,
they're very curvy and spirally,
you need to make sure that you have a nice area
where you have a lot of space to move your hands.
You don't want to be restricted
because that will show in your drawing.
You want to draw in a way that's comfortable
and natural with your hand movement.
So this part of your hand sort of acts like a pivotal point.
You don't want to be drawing sort of away from that.
You want to be using that as a natural way
to draw circles and spirals.
So I'm gonna start off with a simple motif.
It's called a Rumi motif.
So the word Rumi comes from the word Rûm in Turkish,
which refers to Byzantium.
So the Rumi motif,
I like to break it down into two simple shapes.
There is the C shape,
and then there's the S shape.
The C shape has one curve,
whereas the S shape has two curves
going in the opposite direction.
Another way that you could look at it is two circles.
Inside a larger circle,
that creates that sort of ying and yang,
like this, so this is our S curve.
So let's draw our Rumi motif.
So the Rumi motif starts off with a C curve,
like this,
and then you have that S curve that comes like this.
That's a basic Rumi motif.
You see how over here you have one circle,
and you have the other circle,
just like that, ying and yang.
Let's try that again.
You have the C shape, and you have the S shape.
Kind of looks like a leaf or a paisley shape.
C shape, and an S shape.
Now, from that same motif,
you have the C shape and the S shape.
I'm gonna draw out the circle here,
and from that, we're gonna draw
another motif like that.
Let's try that again.
We have the C shape shape, the S shape.
From there, I have another one spread out.
Let's do that again.
I'm gonna make it a little bit bigger, like that.
Another Rumi motif.
We're gonna start off with a slight S shape,
this is sort of a backwards S shape,
and then I'm gonna do the C shape.
Let's do that again.
Now similar to this one,
we're gonna draw it again.
If it helps, you can draw the circle first,
and then connect from here,
comes out, and connects like this.
This motif here is called the pivotal point motif,
and this one here is called the bird's wing.
Let's draw it again.
A lot of these motifs just take a lot of practice,
and as you continue to draw them,
it's gonna become a part of your motor memory,
so a lot of it is just practice.
You want to draw as much as you can.
Don't focus.
If you make a mistake,
don't go back and start erasing it,
and trying to fix it up.
Just do it over again.
This is all just practice.
This is so that we can warm up our hands
and get used to this movement.
The next motif is called the Tepelik motif.
So the Tepelik motif, for this one,
we want them to be perfectly symmetrical,
so I'm gonna take my ruler,
I'm gonna take a red pen,
and I'm just drawing down a dashed line,
and this is gonna be our line of symmetry.
So the first Tepelik motif,
we're gonna start off by drawing a bit of a structure.
We're gonna draw three circles,
like this, and one at the top.
Try to make it nice and round, and symmetrical,
and I'm gonna do that for all three of them.
This is gonna be your structure here.
Now, using this circle at the top,
we're gonna draw this sort of like pointed dome shape.
I'm gonna try to make it symmetrical.
And then, this part is easy.
I'm just gonna outline circles and connect it.
That's one of the Tepelik shapes.
The other one starts off the same way,
has that pointed dome shape.
It comes down this way on the circle,
so you're drawing about one quarter of the circle,
and you're gonna bring it down here.
We're gonna draw a C shape like that, so one curve.
Gonna do that on the other side.
You're gonna draw about a quarter of that circle,
and connect it like this.
And at the bottom,
we're gonna add a little circle like that.
The last shape,
again, the same top part,
is gonna come out like this,
quarter of the way, just as this one,
and then you're gonna connect it down with an S shape,
like that.
The next motif we're gonna draw is the Kapali motif.
Now Kapali in Turkish means closed.
This motif acts as a structural motif when drawing patterns.
So the Kapali motif is a bit more difficult,
so for this one, we're gonna draw
a bit more of the structure beforehand,
so I'm gonna draw two lines of symmetry for this one.
We have a vertical line of symmetry,
and we're gonna draw a horizontal line of symmetry as well.
So just like the Tepelik motifs,
this one has that pointed dome shape.
I'm actually gonna draw in two more lines of symmetry,
or let's call these structural lines,
like that,
And this is where it really helps to have graphing paper.
If you don't have graphing paper,
you can just sort of eyeball this a little bit.
So you're gonna draw a vertical line,
a horizontal line, and then two diagonal lines.
So at the top part,
you're gonna draw the pointed dome shape,
and it's gonna stop at the blue line.
Gonna draw it again there,
and you're gonna do the same thing at the bottom.
You're gonna draw a pointed dome shape.
Now you can count up one, two, three, four units,
so one, two, three, four,
starting here,
and I'm gonna draw an upside down pointed dome shape.
On these two sides, I'm gonna sort of draw in,
it's not quite a circle.
It's more like an oval
That is a Kapali shape.
Let's draw that one more time.
But these are our two Kapali shapes.
It can be difficult drawing symmetrical shapes like this,
especially when the lines of symmetry are different,
where this part isn't exactly the same as this part,
so there's a few techniques that we can use
to make our drawings perfectly symmetrical.
So this was just our sort of warmup exercises.
The next thing we're gonna do
is we're gonna take a piece of tracing paper,
and we are going to fold this in half.
If you don't have tracing paper,
you can always use parchment paper,
and parchment paper will do just about the same thing.
It might be a little bit less translucent as tracing paper.
We're gonna fold this in half like this,
and then we're gonna fold it again,
and we're gonna match the corners,
and try to keep it really neat.
Get nice, sharp edge.
You can use your nail to run it down the edges.
Now, I folded my tracing paper two times,
which means that we have four sections here,
one, two, three, four,
and what we're gonna do
is what I like to call the snowflake method.
It's kind of like in the winter
when you make snowflakes to decorate your house,
where you fold the paper multiple times,
and you do a cutout on one side, and then you open it up,
and it becomes beautifully symmetrical all the way around.
So what we're gonna do
is we're gonna keep our tracing paper folded like this,
and we're gonna draw our own arabesque pattern
on one side of the tracing paper,
and this is gonna be the center of our pattern.
Make sure that you use,
the center is on this fold so that when you fold it out,
it's actually the center and not one of these edges.
So this is gonna be the center of your pattern,
and you're gonna draw a combination of the Rumi,
the Tepelik, and the Kapali motifs.
We're gonna draw a combination of these three motifs
on this piece of tracing paper,
keeping in mind that these are edges and this is the center,
and then we are going to open it up
and draw it on all four sides,
and I'll show you how in just a minute.
So I'm gonna draw a motif, and over here I'm gonna draw
a half Kapali motif, like this.
Have our pointed dome, the oval shape,
and the pointed dome at the bottom.
I'm gonna bring it to the center like that.
I'm gonna draw another Kapali shape.
Have our pointed dome,
we have the oval shape,
but this time I'm gonna join it here like that,
and in the center, I'm gonna draw a Tepelik motif.
I'm gonna draw this one.
On this side, I'm gonna draw another Tepelik motif.
I'm drawing it this way because this is where the fold is.
Let's draw this one.
Next, I'm gonna add a spiral.
So let's do it so that our spiral starts over here,
and then touches the to Tepelik motif,
goes through, touches the other one,
comes around,
like that.
At the end of our spiral, I'm gonna add a Rumi motif,
and at the top over here, I'm gonna add a Tepelik motif.
So this is a half Tepelik motif.
I'm only drawing half of it
because I'm drawing it on the curved line.
I'm gonna add a few little embellishments here, like that.
So I have my pattern here,
and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open it up this way,
and I'm gonna draw on this side.
So make sure that you are drawing on the same side
of the tracing paper.
You don't want to have half the drawing on this side
and half the drawing on the back.
So, open it up.
You have this fold here,
and then you're gonna trace it.
Now, once you have it traced,
if you open it up,
look how perfectly symmetrical that is.
So you have your Kapali shape over here,
you have your Tepelik shape over here,
you have your Rumi shape and some other embellishments.
Over here, you have your other two Tepelik motifs,
and when we fold it this way,
we can turn it around and draw the rest of the pattern.
We're just gonna trace it right on here.
Once you're done tracing, you'll have something
that looks like this, perfectly symmetrical.
Now, we made sure that all of our drawing is on one side,
so what we're gonna do is we're gonna transfer this
to watercolor paper, and the way that works
is you take the side that you draw on,
and you put it against your watercolor paper.
You're gonna tape it down,
and you're gonna draw on it again,
and the pressure from your pencil
is gonna transfer the lead to the other side.
I had already transferred my pattern to the paper earlier.
It looks something like this.
So once it's fully transferred,
you have something that is ready to paint.
So I hope you get a chance
to make your very own beautiful arabesque pattern.
My name is Amina, and I hope you have a great day.
(upbeat music)