Illustrations from a current book project

I’m illustrating a book that is based on a blog written by a teenage girl from Mosul, Iraq.

There are already lots of photos, and also some drawings made by the author herself. My illustrations are partly replacing copyrighted images that she had used in her blog, and partly they are just jazzing up the book and adding emphasis or clarification to the text.

The suwar of the Quran are arranged by length, the longest first, but I’m doing it the other way around with my illustrations — I have started with the smaller illustrations and will do the bigger ones last. :o)

From top to bottom: French journalist Florence Aubenas, who was taken hostage in Iraq 2005, an illustration to a footnote about Muslim prayer, music legends Umm Kulthum, Fayruz and Abdul Alim, Iraqi politician Iyad Allawi, and the author observing how she is not frightened by bombs and explosions anymore.