2nd Year Closing

The end of Second Year is approaching seriously fast. I'm behind on work and stressing out, and all I can remember is how we started this blog around this time last year. We were so excited about getting into Second Year, and now, here I am, contemplating whether I made a right decision by staying in this program.
I guess we'll find out one day.

In the mean time, here are a few sketches from my sketchbook:

A hooker from one of my dreams. 

Oh yea, I forgot to mention my latest project is to turn all my dreams into comics, 

and make a big comicbook of dreams. 

That sounds kinda poetic, 'comicbook of dreams'.

A girl in my class.

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to squeeze in any time to sketch nowadays. I never have a nice, relaxed day where I can sit down and just draw everything I wanna draw. I usually stay up an hour extra, sitting up in bed with my dim bedside lamp on, sketching a few characters out before I force myself to sleep. Or instead of taking notes during lectures, I just draw people in the class. Trying to get as much practice as I can, but finding the time can be quite a strenuous task. 

Finals soon,

No time to waste,

-Deenaaa

Talk8

The Sharjah Art Foundation invited us to present our documentary we made on 'Revisiting Tarab'.
It took place at Bait al Serkal, in the Sharjah heritage area, under the title "Talk8," where people present work they've composed in response to work displayed/performances hosted by the Sharjah Art Foundation.

We actually didn't plan our outfits

Our point of view. Mats and beanbags to lay on

Uncanny resemblance

Watching our documentary

Cupcakes and conversation afterwards

It was a very relaxed and laid-back event, which was so refreshing. Sharjah does art best, honestly.

After that, Samar and I cabbed it to Qanat al Qasba. We visited the Maraya Art Center and looked at art before we went to a cafe to get refreshments.

Samar bought me a balloon, and we named it 'Chicken'

It was a gorgeous and fun Wednesday night. Samar and I are thinking of making it a tradition to go out every Wednesday to an art thing.

Behind on work now, but I'll manage,

-Deena

Design Days Dubai

The first Design Days in Dubai took place in the middle of March. It was part of the huge explosions of artsy and design events.

We made posters as part of one of our projects for our design, VIS 202, course. We had to create colorful shapes and use literature quotes to make a poster. Some of the work we produced in class was chosen to be displayed at Design Days, and here is our booth:

Bottom row, from left to right: Mine is the second one that's blue, Samar's is the black one in the middle, and Naima is the grey one on the right of Samar's. (I just realized that we were all placed together :D)

This was the first time Naima had her work on display, so that was really exciting. It was an awesome exhibition to be part of, and definitely a huge honor to have our work displayed there. I'm really proud of Naima for all her hard work that she spent on her poster. Everyone's always going on about this 'potential' that she has, and I think she really put that behind her when she made that poster. 

I'll bug her to write about it one day. 

Samar and I making our own art in scupltures

Design Days Dubai was very different to all the other exhibitions I've been to here. First off, it was a design exhibition. We only really have art exhibitions here, so we hardly see any design things, it's pretty rare. Secondly, it was filled with furniture! I've never seen that much furniture in an exhibition before. I know that it was a design fair with an emphasis on furniture, but damn, I didn't expect that much furniture. It was awesome though, there were some really beautiful and great designs.

mischer'traxler

And we got to meet mischer'traxler again, a super awesomely cool design duo. They're what I aspire to be with Naima and Samar, except we'd be a trio called abdelwahed'idris'stevens. Would be quite a mouthful, but that's cool too.

And that was Design Days Dubai,

-Deenaaa

MARCH MADNESS - March Meeting, Sharjah Art Foundation

March is both wonderful and exhausting. All art events in the UAE were squished into the same month, which flooded the cities with creativity and inspiration.
Ever have those nights where your body is completely drained of energy, but your mind is firing up? And all you can do is lay there, incapacitated with the exhaustion while you have this burning desire to create something. I find it an incredibly wonderful and also an excruciatingly painful experience.

Naima and I were really productive during March.
First blog post of the month is going to focus on the March Meeting, made by the Sharjah Art Foundation. It was held in the Calligraphy Square in the Heritage Area of Sharjah in the UAE. That's a whole lot of capital letters.

So Naima and I both volunteered/interned there. We had loads of different responsibilities, like: keeping time during panel discussions and presentations, handing out microphones, ushering people inside the talks when they were about to start, monitoring the books in the library, getting water for the presenters, putting together packages, registering guests and speakers, tweeting live about the event and it really goes on.

We also got to shoot photos and some footage of the event. Together with Samar, a new addition to our group, Naima and I made a documentary about 'Revisiting Tarab', which is a series of performances put together by a Lebanese sound artist, Tarek Atoui. It was the merge of Classical Arabic music and contemporary twists from 22 different world renowned sound artists.

It was an amazing night and it brought people from all over to come and join the show.

I'll have to remember to add the documentary later. I have to do some final touches.

Samar's in the middle :D

Overall, it was an entirely great experience. We got to meet awesome people, eat free food, and listen to great music. As one of our professors always says, "You have to steal time" in order to attend any of these art and design events. And we practically robbed any concept of time we had. We all fell considerably behind on our courses, but we are catching up, and it's completely worth it.

Steal time,

-Deena

The Egginator

Introducing the most bad-ass eggbeater in the kitchen:

 Colored in Adobe Illustrator

I'm currently taking Illustration Drawing (VIS 231), and we had to develop our own character. The only limit was that it had to be a personified electrical object. So I chose an eggbeater 'cause I have this thing for villains.

After about a month, I've compiled The Egginator's character book and I'm really excited about the results. All I wanna do now is animate him, and I needa create more characters to be in his world.
Better yet, I'll get someone to create them for me in an awesome animation collaboration!

Hope all is well in the world,
-Deena

Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award

Left to right: Walid Al Wawi, Ragini Nagu, me, Bassim Eskander, Omar

Alright... So I briefly spoke about the Young Artist Award the last time I was on here. And that was a few months back.
It's been so crazy ever since then. And here's why:

I scrapped my initial video idea for the competition. I redid it, and then scrapped that one too.

I remade my fine art piece, it took about 31 hours over the weekend right before the submission. The submission deadline got extended, and so I got to work on my video piece. With only 2 days to work on the new video, I reshot it with one of my bestfriends, Lex.

I submitted a diptych from my Photo basics course, just to give a shot at both the Fine Arts and the Photography categories. And then I edited my new video an hour before the deadline, so that I could up my chances for the third category, Multimedia.

Within a week, I heard back that my photography and video got shortlisted. And in a month, I took the award for second place in Multimedia.

This was the video:

I'm really honestly shocked and surprised about it. I really still am. It's been so different ever since I won, and I really never would have expected it. 

I got to meet really amazing artists at the show, and I think that may have been the best part about the competition.

With my diptych. The lovely Mira is my model.

Award night.

With the amazing Naima.

I really couldn't have done this without all the encouragement I got from my friends and professors. I will seriously forever be in emotional debt to them, or something like that at least.

Anyways,

-Deena