Galvanise Summer Exhibition

Summer 2022 has been full of surprises and amazing experiences! I’m very thankful to all of the people and opportunities I’ve had when it comes to displaying and exhibiting my art.

I am proud to say I am part of the second group exhibition at Spitafield Studios, where the theme is ‘Galvanise’ and the piece I selected was BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER (printed to size A1 on foam board). I wanted to go big for this piece and make a stamp in the exhibition. This is one of the first pieces you see on display as you enter the exhibition and the feedback from visitors on the opening night have been astounding. The representation and powerful message people received from the piece was envigorating for me as an artist, I am so motivated to create more pieces with important messages. Most of my art is melancholy and drawn for fun and beauty, but I would love to even more start creating art with a message to the masses too.

The main piece is for sale but there are also smaller A5 size prints available to purchase too.

The exhibition is up until November 2022, please check it out!

MAKE SHIFT CREATE – BLACK CREATORS RESIDENCY

Make.Shift.Create is a charity foundation based in Brixton and they reached out to me on Instagram to select me as one of their black creatives for their 3 months residency programme.

This is an exciting opportunity I have been waiting for! I’ll be able to get more recognition as an artist in London, I also get to sell my art merchandise in their shop and online!

To commerate this achievement, I am going to release an exclusive collection just for this residency which starts on Sunday 24th April with the event at Pop Brixton. I’ll be selling art prints and a few new exclusive merch so please keep a look out.

I am truly grateful to have this opportunity to branch out my audience and get my artwork out there, especially to bring joy to those who see it and they get to support me and keep a piece of art for themselves so they too can feel empowered. There is so much power in seeing yourself in illustrations and paintings, something which I didn’t see a lot of growing up. I show myself and black women love when I create my illustrations.

FROM SCRATCH – CLOSING CEREMONY

Thursday 7th April 2022

The closing ceremony for the first successful group exhibition by my good, dear friend Annette Fernando is happening this Thursday. I am very happy to announce that not only did I feature in the exhibition, but I’ll also be hosting the event on the night!

I felt with my experience and confidence built up from doing YouTube videos and Twitch livestreams, this was the next step up for me to go. I am very excited to host and present on the night!

There will be exclusive postcards of the artwork featured in the exhibition for sale, also some amazing performances from bands, musicians to spoken word poets on the night.

Being part of this exhibition has been such an achievement for me, I’m so happy to be able to share my artwork with my friends and family. It’s made me hungry for more – I will be featuring in more group exhibitions and soon will have my own solo exhibition too (it’s about time I did!)

This has made me proud to call myself an Artist!

redrawing of a classic

I decided to redraw this classic and quite iconic illustration I did back in 2018 but with more of how I currently draw, line and colour my work. I even corrected a few things that always annoyed me (like the hat) but I wanted above all to not change it too much to the point of overkill. So I kept true to the orignal as much as possible. You can really see the progress I’ve made in 4 years!

Updates

Hey there! It’s been a while since I posted a news update to my website, but please rest assured I have been updating my gallery with my latest pieces of artwork, my YouTube channel where you can see more about my breast reduction surgery experience. I also have taken up the hobby of skating during the summer!

During winter 2021 I worked on more exciting commissions including with SEGA! I have also gotten back in to Twitch streaming again where you can check out my drawing progress or watch me play games too. I’m glad to be back to streaming, I slipped off for a long while last year but I still love to stream and want to keep doing it. I’m aiming to do this more because the community brings me so much joy!

My etsy store is still open and functioning if you wish to purchase any art pieces available; I even have an artwork series currently displayed at my first exhibition feature called ‘From Scratch’! This exhibit is at Spitafields Studios please check it out if you can.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing more of my artwork and exciting commissions on here!

Aliyah Art Store on Etsy

I wanted to create some content for my social media that showcases how I package my prints and the quality of the products I have for sale on my Etsy.

As well as this, I wanted to show reviews from recent customers which have been nothing but positive in a fun way! I had the idea to create it similar to the iMessage format. I designed the speech bubbles in Adobe Illustrator, downloaded the SF fonts and then created the templates in Photoshop to complete and save off for web and social media apps. These were the results!

HANAMI 2021

Hanami (花見, “flower viewing”) is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the transient beauty of flowers; I wanted to finally create an illustration celebrating the beautiful cherry blossoms of spring. I adore spring and it’s definitely my favourite season!

Moody Knits

I recently did an art influencer collaboration with my good friend’s new brand Moody Knits where she knits beautiful, chunky, long and colourful scarves and other knitwear! The pandemic has truly bought the best out of her and we did a collaboration together where she gifted me a bespoke scarf and commissioned an illustration from me too!

You can see the collab over on my instagram https://www.instagram.com/aliyahart/

Here is also Moody Knits’ instagram too https://www.instagram.com/m00dyknits/