Written by My name is Fatima and I am a second year textile design student at National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. I am a watercolor enthusiast and I fell in love with this medium ever since I first tried it back in my high school in my fine arts elective class.
My subject matter for painting is mainly botanical art. Other than that, I also enjoy painting birds, I start my painting with a basic pencil sketch and use wet on wet technique to build the color layer and use dry paint technique to add details. It results in a more realistic effect as it deals with the quality of medium at the base and details on top.
I use Winsor & Newton watercolor pans and Raphaël brushes for my artwork. Inspiration for my work comes from the amazing watercolor artist community on Instagram. It becomes my source for work inspiration and helps me keep going. I feel like it shows the amount of room for progress there is, by allowing you to see the potential of the medium, and it is the key to success.
I love Julia Barminova’s work and her art work has always inspired me for being so unique and versatile in so many ways. Recently, I have been working on patterns which I develop by using my botanical illustrations to add versatility to my artwork and use it in design as well.
I hope to inspire many people to see the potential of this medium as a whole field and see the amount of possibilities attached with this very single art medium. I started my art journey when I chose fine arts as an elective subject, It taught me the basics of many different mediums including watercolors.
Initially, I struggled a lot with watercolors and could not achieve the desired results. For one year, I struggled not only with the watercolors but also every single medium and even basic drawing. I channeled my failure and started practicing with every single medium by myself after classes. It helped me figure out the medium I wanted to mainly work with, as that was very important for me to develop my focus on one thing.
After my high school, I applied in arts school and got rejected three times until I finally got in. The gap year was the time for me to redeem my failure again. So, I started practicing with watercolors again while I stayed at home and started posting my work on social media. By this time, I had figured out that I wanted to practice with watercolors over any other medium. But I did not know what to paint. I still struggle with that even now with there being so many options.
I started painting flowers and doing botanical studies. I realized that I enjoyed them more than any other thing that I have tried to paint. It also became a reason for me to choose textile design as my field to combine my art and design skills, combined to make some beautiful products in future.
The gap year not only helped me figure out my medium but also enabled me to learn new things including Photoshop, which I spent reasonable time on. I was able to apply my skill to make myself financially independent through freelancing by designing logos, flyers and menu cards for restaurants.
My main approach for logo designing also includes watercolors. I basically deal with floral and watercolor logos. But, I try my best to not limit myself with one particular style, so I prefer taking up different projects at times to experiment with different styles of design and artwork. Custom work mostly excites me as it opens new dimensions and allow me to experiment and bring my buyer’s ideas to life.
My work can be found both at the links below on Creative market and my Instagram account that I update off and on and share my progress steps as well.
Fatima Aslam
Instagram
Creative Market
Your work is beautiful! Good for you for not giving up! You knew you had it in you and you followed your heart. Critics are one small part of this big world. Thank you for sharing your work and story.
Indeed, and thank you so much!
Beautiful art! Thank you for sharing your story!
Thank youu!
These are lovely and an inspiring story!!
Thanks a ton!
Fatima, I’ve been enjoying your art here for a while now, and it is wonderful to learn more about you. Your work is amazing! Thank you for sharing your artistic journey with us.
Thank you so much, Means a lot!
Lovely botanicals!
Thank you!
Oh Fatima, I absolutely love your work. Do far, painting flowers and birds remains my favourite so your paintings are very inspiring. I’ve not had the benefit of any training so I am trying to learn from books and online tutorials and having a go at replicating artist’s work line yours. I’m off now to look at your links! Thank you.
Thank you so much Eve, It means so much to me, I’d love it if you could share your work with me as well 🙂
Your work is beautiful! So I am happy that you have found your inspiration in nature 🙂
Thank you so much! Means a lot!
Beautiful paintings….Thanks for sharing!
Thank you!
Nice post!! Great work!! Keep on posting such wonderful works in future also.