S
elf-taught Indian artist in Dubai Reshma Sainulabdeen loves to surprise her spectators.
She has been doing that by presenting live shows of sand portrait paintings of famous personalities at various places in the UAE for several years.
However, she has done live sand portrait painting of Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, whose centennial fell in 2018, the most often. Raised in Al Ain, the hometown of the UAE’s founding father, Sainulabdeen, 43, has been an ardent fan of Shaikh Zayed.
As a child, she had a chance to get a glimpse of the visionary leader during the opening of Jebel Hafeet as a tourist spot.
The microbiologistturned-artist found the perfect way to bid farewell to the Year of Zayed by presenting her ‘surprising’ art skills on portraits of Shaikh Zayed.
“Why I say it is ‘surprising art’ is because common people usually can’t guess what sort of an image I am drawing till the final stage of the sand portrait,” Sainulabdeen told Gulf News after presenting two portraits of Shaikh Zayed.
One was a sand art portrait and the second was a spray art portrait mainly using oil paint and ink.
In the case of the spray art, which Sainulabdeen ■ said she had improvised, the image appears perfectly after the ink, sprayed on to the outlines made using oil colours, drips down and dries up whereas the sand portraits become visible only after sand is applied on the glue that outlines the image.
While doing sand portraits, Sainulabdeen said she usually draws the image with glue by keeping it upside down until sand is poured on to the canvas.
“It’s only when I turn the canvas around, and keep it upright that people can see whose picture has been drawn.”
True enough, Gulf News was witness to the “wow” factor of Sainulabdeen’s live sand art sessions.