I’m going to attempt to summarise...
I am admittedly very very early on in my artistic journey, I finished school abruptly in March 2020 when the UK lockdown began and was supposed to be starting an Art History degree last September, due to the pandemic and my situation I deferred my university place and that’s how I ended up here! I had a lot of time on my hands and decided to dedicate myself to spending this year learning new artistic techniques and other skills.
During working on my Art A Level I became very interested in Assyrian relief work - I love the extraordinary level of detail in them, the Cuneiform script and the symbolism in the images. I grew up looking at art from all kinds of cultures but mostly at western illuminated manuscripts and art of the Italian Renaissance so, encouraged by my interest in Assyria, I really want to learn more about the arts of the east. I began looking at miniature paintings quite recently and I love their intricacy, rich colours and their role in storytelling! I have been taking Vaishali’s online miniature painting courses for the past few months and I love the process and want to keep improving! I’ve been starting to learn Arabic over the last couple of months, too. So, currently I’m painting, reading and learning!
As for where I hope to go, I’d like to keep learning and expanding my understanding of cultures whilst developing my artwork. I’m going to see where things take me!
Yes Arabic is going to be a long journey for me as it's not a language I have any exposure or experience in - it's not Indo-European so no reference point there. The calligraphy is a dream yes but will have to wait a while for me I think - and in terms of calligraphy I think Persian calligraphy is also beautiful, especially nastaliq and Persian is unique for all its ligatures (special ways to join letters; in English s and t joined together are nice too). I'll wait till I know more and then it will be more meaningful! For me the Arabic language sounds as well are a lot harder to grasp (Persian is Indo-European so I have a foothold!). Yes, it's an honour to have Anastasia, isn't it! Thank you for saying so. I love our community!