DOMESTIKA COURSE – ISLAMIC ART – BIOMORPHICS AND GRIDS
Looking for botanical patterns
Continuing with the preparation stages of this course, Esra, our teacher, instructed us to find patterns featuring organic motifs, and to sketch a single motif. She suggested going to a museum to find things to sketch, but this wasn’t possible for me, so I resorted to my own sources, including Pinterest.
First page
I rather missed the point of the instruction initially, and drew some botanical images from my marvellous botanical inspiration book “Botanicum” which I bought a couple of years ago at a National Trust house.
This very large format hardback book is stuffed with beautiful illustrations, and I had fun doing some ink drawings of a selection.
Second page
It was at this point that I realised I was supposed to be getting inspiration from a pattern, so I turned to Pinterest. What a wealth of images there are to choose from on that site! I searched for such things as “floral patterns,” and “Art Deco patterns” and downloaded quite a selection. I narrowed them down, and selected a single motif from each pattern for my sample sheet.
These are much more stylised and more suitable for inspiration for Islamic art.
The next task
The next task on the list was to create an inspiration collage, either as a cut-and-paste job, or digitally, and I made a start on this late last night. Today, however, I wanted to take advantage of the daylight and to spend some time in the studio. I shall probably make further progress on the collage tonight. I have therefore skipped the completion of this task and moved on to the next unit of the course.
Grids
Making the grid for the final drawing
I had to work in the studio for this as the A3 paper is too large for my lap and I need a good flat surface and good light.
I took a series of photos showing the development of the grid. Being pencil drawings, they don’t show up all that well but you can see the progression.
The grid begins with the drawing of a series of circles, after you find the centre of the paper.
The only instruments needed are a compass and a ruler. Once the circles are drawn, you can find intersection points and begin to add straight lines and further circles. The next photo shows the completion of the first 8-pointed star, composed of two squares. The first is known as a static square, i.e. it consists of horizontal and vertical lines. The second is the dynamic square, which rests on its point. Overlapping one another, they form the 8-pointed star.
The second 8-pointed star, drawn inside the first.
Finally, the third one, drawn inside the previous one. Theoretically you can go on doing this but you might want to leave the centre of the design clear for something else.
We then drew another circle which fitted snugly inside the smallest star.
The final step was to add further diagonals between the existing ones, resulting in 16 divisions radiating from the centre.
You can see that I have written “design unit” in the one at the top, just to the right of the central vertical line. This is where you draw the biomorphic designs on a piece of tracing paper. You then use this to mirror the design and it enables you to repeat it around the whole grid.
You draw this grid on regular paper. Once it is complete, and you use it to make your first design unit on the tracing paper, you move on to your decent watercolour paper, and begin transferring the pattern. You can keep the grid and use it for further designs in the future.
A problem with grids
I watched an absolutely fascinating YouTube video a couple of days ago. This YouTuber has been drawing geometric Islamic designs all his life, having learned from his father, who learned from his – going back many generations. He showed a portfolio of designs, some of his own and some of his father’s. They use a simpler format which he says is most probably the method the original designers used for their astonishing decorations on Islamic buildings. He said that everyone these days is using what he calls the “Western, or grid method” – certainly all the books by the acknowledged experts such as Keith Critchlow, Daud Sutton and Eric Bourg use this method, as do most of the online tutorials. The problem is that these grids produce a distorted pattern and do not preserve the proportional relationships between the elements of the pattern. They work perfectly if you follow a particular tutorial, but if you try to rearrange the elements to create a new pattern, it will not work. Also, if you extend the lines beyond the single pattern element, they do not tesselate correctly. They also use too many construction lines, making it over-complicated in the early stages before you even get to begin on the pattern itself, producing a confusing array of lines.
On the video he made a telling demonstration by superimposing an outline version of the traditional method, and one created with the Western or grid method, over pictures of the actual patterns in the buildings, and the grid method ones did not fit. When you see a pattern created with the grid method in isolation, it may look perfectly fine, but put alongside one done with the traditional method, the difference, though subtle, is obvious; the traditional ones are more aesthetically pleasing. The individual shapes created within the patterns should all have an axis of symmetry, i.e. they should be able to be flipped over along the central line without distortion. Many patterns generated by the grid method produce shapes which do not obey this rule. Our eyes and brains are attuned to recognise symmetry, regularity and good proportion as beauty. Those ancient designers certainly knew what they were doing.
I have not yet drawn any grids for geometric designs so I am coming to this with a clean slate. I have several books which all use the grid method, including an absolutely beautiful book on drawing the patterns in the Alcazar in Seville which arrived today. For my purposes the grid method would probably be fine, but I can’t unsee what I saw on that video. I want to do the best that I can, so what I propose is to draw some basic 4-fold and 6-fold templates using both methods to compare. Starting with the right foundation could save me a lot of hassle in the future if I want to create my own patterns, or attempt to follow the patterns of the past with any degree of accuracy.
This is obviously a technical question, and I find it very surprising that nobody has been talking about this – even the acknowledged experts here in the West, some of whom come from an Islamic background.
