ISLAMIC ART – FIRST ATTEMPT, AND A NEW COMPASS
In advance of the new Domestika course on drawing Islamic art, I decided to have one or two “dry runs” to get my hand in.
I have been fascinated by the complex geometric patterns in Islamic art for decades, and have several books on the subject. Actually getting down to doing it, it’s always been on the back burner while I did other stuff, but now I’ve got a course upcoming, I finally got going.
The Domestika course is concentrating more on Arabesques, the flowing floral and botanical designs common in Turkish ornamentation. This is different from the complex tessellation of the abstract patterns. I shall learn the two in tandem.
A tile design
The other day I watched a livestream on YouTube and drew along with her. The final result was an 8-pointed star which was a bit small in the centre of my paper, so I decided to add a border to give it more impact.
This is the result, which I have called “Tile 1.” Although it has elements of the patterns generated by circles and straight lines, the style is more Arabesque. The initial drawing was with a 2H graphite pencil and then with permanent fineliner ink pens. The colour is watercolour, and the gold is gold metallic gouache. The paper is 300 gsm cold press watercolour paper.
I’ve also been following another YouTuber who draws beautiful mandalas with interwoven patterns in gold, over a dark background decorated to look like galaxies. This is what I attempted to do with my background here. The stars were done with a fine white acrylic marker.
A couple of detail shots
The central motif is in the Turkish style with the interwoven decoration in gold surrounding the 8-pointed star in the centre. I couldn’t find anything online to fill my border panels so I made up my own design for those.
As usual, the gold didn’t show up very well on the photos, but later when it was propped up on the fireplace it reflected the light a bit better.
Construction of these patterns
Everything in these Islamic patterns is constructed just with circles and straight lines. All you need is a decent compass and a ruler. There is no measuring involved. The people who made these incredible patterns centuries ago were not mathematicians, but artesans and craftsmen with an incredible eye for pattern and design. A cursory search for Islamic decoration online will reveal mind-blowing buildings and everyday objects, all embellished with complex repeating patterns.
Ages ago I started following Samira Mian on YouTube and she teaches the method of drawing these repeating patterns.
She has a video about the best equipment for these drawings, which is very helpful.
My new compass
I have a small compass set which I believe is Staedtler, which has been adequate for most things. It contains two compasses. Only the smaller one has a screw adjustment which locks the radius, but there’s always been some play when adjusting this. Accuracy at the initial drawing stage of these patterns is essential, so your old school compass really isn’t up to scratch! I ordered another, larger Staedtler compass from Amazon and this has a spring at the top which keeps the adjusting screw in tension. This means that whatever radius you set stays put. There is also an extension bar that enables one to draw huge circles! This isn’t very usual in Islamic art, but for mandala drawing it could be invaluable.
The new compass arrived today. Here is a photo showing the two sets together.
If you look closely, you can see that the screw on the small compass in the old set on the left is out of alignment. Up until today it was working OK, but when I tried to turn the screw it was clicking and obviously the thread was partially stripped. This set is very old, so I have obviously got the new one just in time!
The spring on top of the new one makes the adjustment super firm. The screw works beautifully and quite quickly to adjust the radius. The compass feels solid and heavy, and is of high quality.
There is another difference with the accessories. In her video, Samira mentioned that the pencil holder on the good compasses has a much better grip. Here are my two side by side – the old one on the left and the new on the right. You can see the difference, and why the grip would be better.
Samira said that she uses this pencil/pen holder more than the little pencil lead holder, so she cut away part of the padding in the box to accommodate it while it’s on the compass. I thought this was a good idea, so I have done the same. It’s quite a fiddle undoing the screw and changing the accessories, and I didn’t want to have to do this every time I packed the compass away.
As the old compass was now useless, I sabotaged it and removed the accessories. These compass sets come with a little box of spare screws, leads and compass points. The parts are small and it would be easy to lose them. Samira had some good advice: when changing them, always do it over the box, so that if you drop anything, you don’t lose it on the floor!
I checked that the screws were compatible with the new compass, and they are. I removed them all and stowed them away in the original spares box, which is now in with the new set. The extension arm of the old set is quite short and probably wouldn’t be that useful, even if it did fit, which it doesn’t, and the pencil holder isn’t worth keeping either.
The result is that I now have a beautiful new compass which is enhanced with spares from the old one! Win win. Everything fits in the new box, even if it doesn’t have individual recesses for everything. I’ve stripped out the old box and will keep the box itself for other things.
An interesting fact about compasses
Modern compasses are not usually such good quality as the old-fashioned ones. Before the advent of computers and CAD, engineers and architects were expert in technical drawing with real drawing instruments on paper on a drawing board. They had high quality tools for this exacting skill. Nowadays they are doing it on computers. I think this is a shame, because there is something very human about putting pencil to paper, measuring and drawing, and producing something that has come from your own brain, eye and hand, not to mention heart. Since they no longer require the technical drawing instruments that were the tools of their trade, there is apparently not so much need for these instruments to be produced to such a high degree of accuracy. Mostly they are used for art nowadays, and increasingly so with the growing popularity of mandala drawing. Samira said it’s great if you can get your hands on a genuine vintage compass!
Recently I bought a modern reproduction of a vintage brass proportional divider which is a hundred times better than the cheap plastic one I had before. You can see its polished wooden box on the fireplace in the photo near the start of this post. Maybe interest in these fine instruments will continue to grow, and many more modern reproductions will be made, enabling today’s artists to have as much pleasure from them as the technical drawing experts of the past.
