New Work: Mira Bai

The moon, stars, cats and evil eyes are all part of Mira's obsessions and interests. Something about this combination sounds exciting and mysterious. Just like her dreamy eyes... 

 

Sketching Time

This piece was sketched for a fashion illustration competition a few months back. Unfortunately I wasn't short-listed but I absolutely love it. I wanted to experiment with my drawing and take the image a step further. So instead of just drawing a skinny figure wearing clothes I came up with a concept (flying girls-I always find myself drawing my figures expressing some kind of movement) and for the figures I made them more curvy in some places, played around with size and scale. I used pencil for this as I wanted to create a 'raw' image. The fine details on the hair and dresses definitely adds to the overall interest and creates more movement throughout the piece. I actually found it very therapeutic creating those patterns!  The dresses are from two of my favourite designers - Herve Leger and Balmain  both AW2010 collection.

New Work: Wonder Woman & Superman

Just completed this latest commission for a couple who wanted to be superman and wonder woman flying over Dubai's Burj Khalifa illustrations printed on canvas. Will post a few interior shots as soon as I receive them!

Illustrating For Charity

Wow! I didn't realize I've been away for so long! Although I've had a busy couple of days I managed to design a few Christmas treats...

'All I Want For Christmas' is a personal charity project to promote charitable donations and social responsibility. It stems out of a personal desire to combine my creative talent with my strong desire to give back by helping charities accomplish their goals. Art for charity will become a monthly activity on my page and I hope that you will be part of it. More details to follow in 2011 but in the meantime please check out the images below for more info about the products. Enjoy!

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All images are property of Samar Sadik illustrations
and may not be used without permission

All images are property of Samar Sadik illustrations
and may not be used without permission

All images are property of Samar Sadik illustrations
and may not be used without permission

In the Press!

Very excited as my work is being featured in this month's EMIRATES HOME magazine, many many thanks  Penny McCormick, the editor and the rest of the EH team. I love Emirates Home, not only because it was my baby for four years but also because it really has it all from rich content, to clean and well designed layouts, to lots of great interior photography and an overall unique personality. Don't miss this Christmas issue. You will be inspired...Happy reading for now and stay tuned for my next post about my featured festive illustrations!

Emirate Home December 2010

On Penny's favourite list

So Now Christmas feature

Expert advice from the EH team

A Christmas Doodle

Whenever I have a notebook and a pen with me, I cannot help but doodle away. And I never know what I end up with...in this case a couple of francophile women in Christmas frocks and a little miss fluffy sporting a cool collections of  fashionable over-sized bow ties. I like bow-ties by the way. You will see a lot of them in my future drawings...So all this happened one day when I was out with a good friend of mine while listening to our conversation. Yes, I know what you're thinking....amazing at multi-tasking!  ; ) Yalla, enjoy my friends!

Happy UAE National Day!

Time to show off that red, green, white and black!And my Dubai Doll's are doing just that..! Have a fun long weekend my friends!

Dubai Dolls for UAE National Day

Funsie Onesies

I've always wanted to design funky one-off onesies so when a cousin of mine gave birth to an adorable baby boy I found this to be the perfect opportunity to design a 'souvenir' gift.  My favourite is definitely the name logo in Arabic!

Baby's logo name in Arabic

Baby signs

Working baby

The 'funsies'

Liz and the 80s

Initially I was going to illustrate a caicature of Liz from the sixites but I accidentally came across a picture of her massive, questionable hairdo from the 80s. Talk about va-va-va voom volume! Perhaps still not big enough? Anyway, always good to know that someone else had a bigger hairdo than mine (For those of you who know me, you know what I'm talking about!)

Colour Block 80s

LT wall mural. Arm chair from Moooi,
cushion from Bo Concept

Mabrook! (Congratulations)

Congratulations to the lovely couple Linda and Mahmoud who just got married last eve!! Here's to a happy lifetime together! These illustrations were made for Linda's wedding signboard so once I receive some images of the final piece I shall post! Linda is dressed in traditional Palestinian thobe while Mahmoud sports a Lebanese dabke costume.

Hepburn + Funny Face + Vespa = All Smiles

I love illustrating people in such a way that reveals a fun aspect about their character. Why? Simply because it makes me smile and I guess others too. I call it art that makes you smile. And this adorbale, truely funny-faced little icon called Hepburn has always been on my top list of must-illustrate. I was flipping through her pictures from 'The Audery Hepburn Treasures' (great book by the way if you're a fan) and found myself smiling all the way through at her quirky facial features. The ones that struck me most were the Roman Holiday images. I sort of imagine myself doing the same thing crashing my way through Rome on a little Vespa. Speaking of which I  once read that it's because of her in that movie Vespas have become so popular amongst women...I'd really love to own one. But can anybody bring it to the UAE? I know, we have crazy highways and terrible random drivers but still, I wouldn't mind driving a hot pink one around my neigbourhood!

Marilyn On My Mind

Vanity Fair November issue cover story Marilyn Monroe inspired me to create this caricature. Her story for VF is pretty sad but looking at her pictures she always seems so alive, happy and living it up all the time. Regardless of  her scandals and personal issues, I just think she's an absolutely gorgeous woman and definitely a must-illustrate icon. So I decided to do just that and because I liked the image so much, I wanted to incorporate it for an interior space. I think she looks really good blown-up on the wall with some old-style french furniture like the chaise-longue in the picture. Something symbolic of old and new. I think the combination looks pretty cool and adds a fresh and fun element to any living space. More to come.

Eid Adha Mubarak 2010!

Wishing you, your families and loved ones a wonderful Eid Adha Mubarak!! 

Feline Fatale

Two nights ago I had an amazing night out celebrating my friend's bachelorette party with everyone. I also had the pleasure of helping organize it and creating this super hot illustration of a lady in a cat suit, representing the bride-to-be herself, for a poster. The illustration turned out to be a huge success and an inspiration for the birth of the 'Aty' pose...love it!

photography by Fitri Wahib

Happy Illustrations

This week is all about illustrating profiles and I absolutely love it. Some people think it's poking fun at people and distorting faces, but for me it's not like that at all. Instead I like to think of it as exaggerating some features in such a way as to bring about a certain aspect of the character to life and create a humorous mood (ensuring everyone stays happy too!) My style is very simple really and mainly based on geometrical shapes keeping it nice and clean. This is an illustration of my friends, a lovely couple who recently celebrated their 1st year wedding anniversary. Chantal wanted to give Jack something different with a personal touch as a gift so she commissioned me to create this light-hearted poster which actually turned out to be a lot of fun to make! And a great gift idea too (a happy ending for the couple...)

Sketch Therapy

Sketching is indeed very therapeutic and enriching. It definitely helps me overcome creative blocks as I suddenly find myself generating new ideas to play around with. At other times, doodling away simply helps me unwind and forget about everything....

Architectural Avalanche

This is a pop-up store under the high line in New York City for fashion designer Richard Chai created in collaboration with Snarkitecture. The interior features an urban glacial cavern installation creating a dynamic atmosphere that taps into the senses and thus ultimately redefining the fashion shopping experience by making it a unique one for visitors.

image via dave pinter

image by David Smith and Faris Al-Shathir

image by David Smith and Faris Al-Shathir

images via contemporist

image via contemporist

image courtesy snarkitecture, photographer: lexie moreland

Leading Lady

I recently watched Liz Taylor's Cleopatra from 1963 on my way back from London. I'm not into classic movies but I was intrigued to watch it because it's based on a true story about one of the most powerful women in history and for its Oscar winning performance. Liz Taylor was absolutely breath-taking especially in every costume she wore...A movie definitely worth watching and a feast for the eyes. Gave me lots of ideas to think about too including this illustration..







The Beginning

Thought it would be nice to start my blog by posting some recent work. Just wrapped up a new set of chic and elegant interior illustrations for an upcoming storage feature...