Fatima Al Hashimi is “building a square community, one square person at a time.”
The subjects of her illustrations share a number distinctive features. They all have large square faces with button eyes. Most have small noses and smiles to the side as mouths.
But that’s not to say that her square subjects are indistinguishable from one another.
With hunched shoulders and a straight-lined mouth, her Van Gogh emanates the brooding seriousness of the Dutch master's self-portrait albeit without the bottomless intensity of his green eyes. On the other hand, her square version of Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring has the same wide eyes and parted lips of the original, a cartoonish echo of the enigmatic expression. Her square Umm Kulthum – complete with the pearl necklace and oval glasses she was known to wear – has the proud posture and aplomb expression that the legendary Egyptian singer was famous for.
Al Hashimi says her distinctive aesthetic on Square People developed from her love for cartoons and doodling. For the Bahraini artist, the best part of drawing a square person is outlining the finished draft with a fine line black pen, exactly like in the comic books that inspire her. To give the illustrations a three dimensional, she sometimes glues flowers, leaves and wrappers to the work.
“For props, I’d go to random shops looking for buttons, sequins, pieces of cloth, fake lashes, artificial leaves and flowers. It’s all about finding the missing piece to the artwork," she says. "The personalised touch comes with every person I intend to draw. You can clearly get a glimpse of what they love by looking at their square version. My pieces are usually small ranging from the size of a coaster to an A4 canvas.”
Each Square Person can take anywhere between 20 minutes to two days to make, depending on the medium and colours used.
“It takes around two hours, sometimes stretching over a couple of days if it’s a canvas and the colours used are acrylics and the drawing requires more detail,” she says, adding that sometimes she goes through several drafts before deciding on the final piece.
“However, most of the drawings in my personal sketch book are spontaneous and haven’t been drafted before. I drew Umm Kulthum's portrait when out for dinner with friends and Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait at my grandmother’s house.”
Al Hashimi says her Square People project started about 6 years ago, when she was thinking of making her mother a birthday card. "I've always loved the idea of creating personalized cards and gifts ever since I was young and I wanted to make her a special card for her birthday, since it was an annual ritual," Al Hashimi, who works in marketing, says.
Instead of sketching the usual flowers, butterflies and bubbly letters, Al Hashimi says she decided to draw herself, her brother and sister as cartoon characters, marking the first three Square People.
“I started with a draft where I drew three squares representing the three faces. I drew the same face for all three characters. Then I started personalizing each character to reflect how we appeared in real life with a dash of style and personality to match each one of us.”
Al Hashimi soon began drawing other loved ones with her idiosyncratic cartoonish style. She first drew them on cardboard boxes and restaurant menus before moving on to purchasing art supplies when she started making Square People cards and canvases.
“I usually draw portraits of my friends and family members during special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, when they’ve achieved a certain milestone or even just to draw a smile on their faces,” she says. “I even created a comic for one of my friends as a birthday gift.”
Al Hashimi, who earned her bachelor's degree in business management from Bahrain Polytechnic in 2013, says art was never an academic priority for her before Square People. Ever she began accepting commissions six months ago, she has set her sights on a master's degree in a major that combines business and art under one umbrella.
"Square People is a colourful world with endless possibilities and it has allowed me to express myself in a creative way while putting a smile on the faces of many. I hope to participate in exhibitions in the near future and I'd like to create my own comics someday," she says.
