How They Met

This is one of the works that I submitted for the AAU Annual Spring Show 2010. It was done for the Graphic Novel class that I had in Spring 2010. Originally, it's a 3 page short story, but I'm only showing the first page. As you can see above, this is the process that I went through to get this done; pencil sketch, Inking and then digital painting. I also looked into some old pictures of my parents, as this story was inspired by them...

Amarin Family Tree 2010

I finally managed to work on some modifications concerning the Amarin's Family Tree 2010. I started working on this project a year ago... Ammo Balsam asked me to create a nice and clear tree for the family that has the names of all the males and females in the family. He did a great job contacting some people and getting all the needed information to make it accurate. This image is the finished version that was printed on Easter 2010.

Cardboard Deer Head

I've always found animal head mounts interesting, and I wanted to have one in my future farmhouse. On Christmas break 2009, I was walking around in down town San Francisco. I found an amazing cardboard deer head hung on a wall in a jeans store. I kept looking at it for almost 10 minutes. Well... I memorized the number of all parts, sizes and shapes. I wanted to do one myself so bad! So that night, I got some reference images and drew all the shapes on a digital software and printed them out. The next day I bought a huge cardboard and started working. I had to finish it in 2 nights, because I was leaving to Florida after, and I wanted to take it as a present for my sister there. And this is how it came out... Pretty accurate :p

Zein Scars

Zein is a beautiful girl whose smile reflects her joyful character. Not that I'm a wizard, but I saw more behind that smile. I then thought that if her insides were meant to reflect her outer figure, then this is how she would look like. I believe in letting imagination enhance my art. Decorated with wreckage and decay, this insect-like figure is flying in the garden of life helpless but hopeful. Pointillism is a technique that I always wanted to examine, and working with this style was a rewarding experience.

Abu Odeh

I've seen this in a book when I used to work in advertising. And since then, I kept seeing my father's face depicted by the same concept... So I did this a while ago, and this is how it came out. You can also see the lovely picture that I used, to copy the face from.

Wooden Strings

"This was my concept (read between the lines). Being someone's doll is like having your hair brushed like silk, having a new unseen color be named after you... it's like dancing in a blanket of stars... ... it doesn't take long until you realize you're being locked behind a rainbow of bars... the sparkling stars are nothing but a camouflage... the dress were knit to fool you, the jewels were cut to fascinate you... everything in the set invites you in... you went for the trap of an exhilarating melody of notes but you missed out on the sound of the huge golden gate shutting down right behind you... you went for the mouthwatering smell of poisonous mushrooms... you gave up to your heroine of greed... you can still break free... it's only a matter of choice." By Shereen A. Amarin.

Many thanks to Omar Amarin, Rawan Zreikat, Dunia Ghasib and Ala'a Amarin for all the support and the good times...

Oil Painting

I still remember when I asked my instructor about the way him and other students painted, where they somehow abbreviate the structure and build the painting out of a wide range of colored brush strokes. He then told me that painting is like language, it doesn't matter what language you speak as long as you're speaking it right.

Also it turned out that the style I'm working with is much harder than the one I liked!? And if I can get better in it, then it wouldn't be hard to learn the easier one. Those two portraits are my father and my sister Ruba, a grueling exercise that I needed so bad.

Mistakes...

This video shows seven stages of my father's portrait painting process. You will notice that I did a lot of mistakes with colors, and tried so hard to fix them over and over again... Until I came up with a final combination, which unfortunately is not even close to what I had in mind! It's strange and tough. But as my friend Mike said: "Education is a necessary evil", We slowly, painfully yet unmistakably absorb these skills, and sneak in what really provokes our learning: the imagination.

Omar Portrait

Our Portrait Painting teacher asked us to come up with a good reference to paint a monochromatic painting, at the time when my brother Omar was in San Francisco for a short visit. I took a couple of pictures of him at one of the academy buildings, where they had good lighting lamps. And this oil on board painting was the result! My teacher pointed out a lot of issues that I need to work on in order to get better... And I'm working on that...

Magazine Cover

This was a magazine cover exercise for the Narrative Illustration class. The teacher wanted us to pick a well known character and make a nice setup that suits them, and reflect their nature. As you can see, I picked Marilyn Manson because he has an interesting dark look! Anyway we had the freedom to use any medium we prefer. So I worked with watercolors because I wanted to improve at that. But we had to go through thumbnails and sketches before the final artwork, and that helped me think more about what would be more convincing when depicting a rock star.

Head Drawing

Those are some drawings for a bunch of models that I drew from life in a head drawing class. I was trying to measure stuff as much as I could, and find some relations between different parts of the face in order to be accurate; as I was doing head studies. This class was an experience that I would never forget. I was also introduced to a lot of master artists' works that I learned a lot from.

Charcoal Drawing

The girl with a hat is one of my best charcoal drawings. I worked carefully on the details as I was moving from one part to another, and it took me around 20 hrs to finish it. One interesting fact that I'm proud of is that if you took a closer look at it you can barely find any white spot. Maybe just her eye's highlight and a small part of her white shirt. It's a drawing rich with tones, and smudged very neatly which gives it a photograph quality.

Clothed Figures

Those two drawings were my last homework for the Clothed Figure Drawing class. The teacher asked us to draw two figures with two different poses, one with the head towards us and the other with the feet towards us. I asked my sister and brother to take specific shots that reflect what I had in mind, to used them as my direct reference. So I came up with a reclining figure for a girl who drugged herself to death, and a sitting figure for a weirdo!

Caravaggio Copy

A copy of the masterpiece "Amor Vincit Omnia" by Caravaggio. It was a homework assignment for the Figure Studio class, a charcoal 45 x 60 cm drawing. My teacher was impressed with it, he loved the details of the musical instruments at the bottom. This class was really hard, I've never used the charcoal before or drew nude models, but I think it was a good experience that improved my skills.

Gargoyle's Graveyard

This was my homework for an illustration class at the AAU*. The instructor asked us to come up with a conceptual line drawing of a street using the one point perspective grid, where all the horizontal lines that are traveling away from the viewer diminish at a single point on the image's horizon.

We completed the drawing by adding shadows being casted by one light source, according to the correct rules of construction. The coloring was an extra work that I decided to do just for fun!

Anger's Playground

This clip belongs to our latest video collection End of My Own World*. It describes anger from different points of view... I uploaded the first half of the video only, because of a size problem! The whole scene was filmed by us The Creepers*, except for the song which is by Marilyn Manson... Enjoy! (PG-13)

Dumb School

We had a great fun doing all the crazy stunts in Dumb School Experiments* 2005, and this clip comes as an introduction for all the great memories... The song used is "Word Up" for "Korn".

Stan

This picture was taken for Stan in our backyard within his last days. I made this guy out of old newspapers and transparent roll-tape. He was sitting straight, always held an empty plastic cup. His body was full of bad news from all over the world. I barely touched him during his life... I wanted to see how natural forces will treat him. He was getting older everyday, just like us! And this is how he ended up... He used to be a good friend for some people. Stan lived a sad life, but he taught us a lot. "Waiting all this time, I've got nothing to hold on, but the faces of my life, I can see before I'm gone".

Eng. Akram Amarin

Above are some sketches for Eng. Akram Amarin (Abu Odeh) from Odeh's New Life* main characters, showing his different reactions, and his head from different angles. But in the actual story -the comic book- it's done less professionally, or simpler because of the huge story-line the series are based on! But anyway you'll notice that lines are much cleaner, and the images are colored which makes it more valuable... Eng. Akram is my great father whom I dedicate all my works for.

The Cemetery

Jonathan Davis from Korn, in The Cemetery*. A mixed media work, pencil illustration and photoshop painting.