Painting of Bismilla-hir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Radhia Firfirey,

Painting of Bismilla-hir-Rahman-ir-Raheem,

2010.

65cm×50cm, A1 size paper.

Crawford, Cape Town. 

The calligraphy style I used is the Naskh Islamic style. I placed the text within a geometric shape. Bismilla-hir-Rahman-ir-Raheem means: In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.  The aim of using the yellow colour is to bring the orange colour forward as a focal point. When looking at this painting a person gets a sense of the shape flying towards him. The aim of this painting is to bring the sentence towards the viewer’s eye. To begin this project you will need: 5 × tubes 75ml Acrylic colour paint, 3 × synthetic / bristle Artists brushes (2 flat, 1 round), 1×Artist painting palette, and 1× 200 gsm A2 Artist paper.

The Naskh style was one of the earliest Quránic scripts. It was designed during the 10^th centaury by Ibn Muqlah. The Naskh style has a very comprehensive system of proportion and displays a very rhythmic line. There have been many copies of the Quran written in this style and it is easy to read it. The proportions of this style are usually written with short horizontal stems and with almost equal vertical depth above and below the medial line. The curves are full and deep, the uprights straight and vertical, and the words are generally well spaced.

This painting is placed landscape format with the sentence as the for-draft. In the middle-draft a shape is place into the painting to create harmony and balance. The focal point is the Ba at the beginning of the sentence with which the shape links in harmony. The colours that are use in the painting are mostly warm colours. The word Ba is painted in a secondary colour, i.e.  Orange, that is camouflage with yellow. The red background is a complementary colour of yellow and green is a secondary colour that is complementary to red. Complementary colours do not camouflage each other and hence the words are emphasized. In this painting there is a sense of three dimensional perspective forms.

Firfirey, R. 2011. Painting of Bismilla-hir-Rahman-ir-Raheem. Crawford, Cape Town.