We are thrilled to announce our Creative Calligraphy Course with Lebanese Artist Joumana Medlej starting in September 2016!
7 September – 12 October 2016
September: 7, 14, 21, 28 | October: 5, 12
Wednesdays 18:00 – 20:00
Final Project Sunday 16, 14:00 – 18:00
6 Weeks + 4 hours final project – 16 Hours
Course Fee – £205
Course description:
In this non-traditional calligraphy course, we will not use reed pens and repetitive copying. Instead, we will return to the original source of Arabic calligraphy, the Kufi family of styles, and study it with a modern design approach. Kufi was the first Arabic script to be consciously made beautiful, an unlike the later round scripts with their strict rules, it can be constantly reinvented and is not tied to any given tool or medium. Students, then, can benefit from the same creative freedom that the earliest calligraphers enjoyed, and find their own approach to the art of Arabic calligraphy.
We will learn the essence of the letters and how it expresses itself in different styles; spacing, proportions and the uniquely Arabic concept of kashida; compositional approaches including the highly specialized Square Kufic. Each of these design notions will be accompanied by a practical exercise to anchor the theory and allow students to learn from each other. The course will culminate in a final project where the student chooses a word or phrase and creates their own composition for it. Examples of final projects are shown below.
About Joumana Medlej:
Joumana was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. A graphic designer by training, she learned the essence of the Kufi script from master calligrapher Samir Sayegh, through years of close collaboration. She learned to breathe new life into a traditional art, not merely copying or reviving its old forms but finding a contemporary language for it. She is especially interested in the unique relationship between Kufi and geometry, both sacred arts. She now lives in London where her study of these fields is ongoing.
See more at http://majnouna.com/
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