What if the beautiful blue scenery of Alexandria’s sea was a pattern for a short summer dress worn by a beautiful young lady? Or if the downtown Cairo’s antiquated buildings are combined to make a formal dress for a working girl? That’s how artist Mohammed Salah featured the beauty of Egypt in his latest projects.
Salah is a young graphic designer who always dreamed of combining the beauty of Egypt’s most known landscapes with hand drawn illustrations. He does that through a set of paintings displaying girls wearing transparent dresses that show the background of the pictures as the dresses’ patterns. The 26-year-old artist is originally a graduate of the communications department at the faculty of engineering. Yet, this field of study couldn’t drift him away from his lifetime passion.
The pictures feature Egypt’s most mesmerising scenes, from the pure blue Nile of Aswan to the greenish bright colour of Cairo’s gardens. This includes scenes from governorates like Mansoura, Alexandria, and Damanhour; each with the place’s most famous sites.
“I’ve always wanted to come up with an unusual project in which I set the spotlight on the beauty of these places in a hand-drawn illustratrion,” Salah stated, adding that “through these paintings, I highlight the true beauty of them by focusing on them through the dresses’ patterns”.
Despite Salah not personally taking the photos of the scenes, he bought their copyrights from Shutterstock, a leading global provider of high-quality licensed images. “My main focus was not photography; it was pointing out the most beautiful part of the photo through my illustrations,” Salah explained.
The main theme of the illustratrions is colour brightness, whether this entails the colours of fishing boats in the sea or a mixture between the trees’ green shades and sky’s bluish colours. All of the paintings leave viewers with a sense of joy and grace.
“I intentionally looked for places that have a mixture of vivid intense colours,” Salah said. “That’s why I picked the pictures from eight different governorates and I’m planning to complete the album with places from the all 24 governorates.”
The album went viral on social media, raising a wave of exhilaration for the creativity of the idea and the beauty of its application.
“I never expected that the feedback would be that thrilling,” Salah said. “I’ve been thinking of the idea for so long, not knowing people would like it that much.”
Photos Handout to DNE
