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Throw Back: Editorial Illustration

on June 08, 2017

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Ibn Muqla canon, excerpts, plus Ahmed Rafiq Book: The Aesthetic Foundations of the Arabic Scripture at Ibn Mulaqh. Excerpts and table of contents.

Full with plenty of ellegance and harmoy, here a glimpse in the calligraphic work of Ibn Muqlah. Ibn Muqlah (886-940 CE) was an official of the Abbasid empire, a diplomatic and also an innovator in the field of the calligraphy; his writings lead a change in the way the documents were rendered in the Arab world, from kufic to naksh. Here we can appreciate a copy of his work. Below I also post excerpts of Ahmed Rafiq Book: The Aesthetic Foundations of the Arabic Scripture at Ibn Mulaqh. Excerpts and table of contents. It is an interesting book, specially when doing the connections to greco-latin traditions, for example, when comparing the proportions of letter Alif to the Vitruvian man. All these contents are in the repository of islamicmanuscripts.com , including works of Sheila Blair, Paul Delaroche, D. James and others. Here are excerpts and screenshots of a very interesting book written by Ahmed Rafiq commenting the life and work of the renowned Arab calligraph

Alif , letters and scripts

In the same sense that the ancient Greeks have Corinthian, Doric and ionic styles, the culture of Islamic middle eastern countries have a rich history of its own, a timeline of evolution and milestones that depict a complex evolution of this art form. If music flourished in Central Europe and classical painting in Western Europe, the clues to see the art of these countries is the variety, complexity and richness of the stylistic and historical dimensions of the calligraphy. That is very much the limit of my appreciation, as my lack of knowledge set boundaries to my assessment as mere aesthetic opinion or contemplation. Actually since I mention the Greeks, the Arabic letters have a tradition of proportion studies very much like the modulor of LeCorbusier, or other systems that use analogies to the human body or geometric figures, as you can see in the image below, to the right upper side, where you see the letter alif (a) inscribed in a circle and also defined by a succession of rhombo

Exercises with Caravaggio: Judith & Holofernes and other works. Color analysis, etc

1 Caravaggio (1571-1610) is, among the Italian Old Masters, a painter renowned for the violent chiaroscuro of high contrasting scenes where a fragment of light reveals everything in the middle of a deep darkness Because the light of Caravaggio is devoid of the subtleness. It is sharp and clear as could be to make the shadows more intimidating. Theatrical, yes, they are, but more of an avant-garde scene than of classical harmony, and that is why his art is so appealing to the contemporary eyes. More proper of the Neapolitan baroque than of the Roman classicism, the paintings, could be said, speak of a tremor of human existence, a pathos. The believer who has visited a baroque church in the daylight of a sunny day can easily recognise such a setting. But also Caravaggio's paintings work because in the middle of that light setting, the artist built his characters wth strong volumes.And that mixture is what has attracted me to make some exercises using his works. Even in his early wo

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