 And I'm a visual artist. I teach Islamic art. I teach Islamic geometric patterns and arabesque art. In today's lesson, I'm going to teach an Islamic geometric pattern. So this pattern that we are going to learn is a fourfold pattern. All geometric patterns start off with a circle that's divided into equal parts. Depending on the number of equal parts that is divided into will determine the type of geometric pattern. So a pattern that is a fourfold pattern, it will start off with a circle that's divided into four equal parts. And from there, you can get shapes such as squares, eight pointed stars, and 16 pointed stars. These are all multiples of four. When you start off with a circle and then divide into five equal parts, you will get a fivefold pattern. And from there, you'll get shapes such as pentagons, five pointed stars, and 10 pointed stars. And next would be a sixfold pattern. You have a circle divided into six equal parts. And from there, you get shapes such as a hexagon, six pointed star, and 12 pointed stars. This is the pattern that we are going to draw. It is a fourfold pattern. To draw this pattern, all we need is a compass and ruler. This is the compass that I will be using. I will refer to this part of the compass as the metal tip. And this part of the compass where the pencil is as the lead tip. The second thing we will need is a ruler. And lastly, a pencil. So you will start off with a clean sheet of paper and we're gonna find the center of the paper. One way that you could do that is you can measure the sides of the paper, find the middle point over here and here, place your ruler, and then find the center of the page. Now, once you've found the center, you could draw a horizontal line all the way across, mark your center, and then you're gonna use the metal tip of your compass, and you're gonna put it on the center and draw a circle. When using a compass, you wanna use the top part of the compass so that you're not shifting the radius of the circle. You're gonna draw a circle just like that. Now, we're drawing a four-fold pattern, so we wanna divide our circle into four equal parts. Right now, our circle is divided into two equal parts. So the next step will be where the circle intersects with the horizontal line. I'm gonna mark these two points. And I'm gonna take my compass and put the metal point where this horizontal line intersects with the circle. And I'm gonna increase the radius on the compass so that it goes past the middle point. So it's somewhere in the middle of these two points. And I'm gonna make two marks over here and here. Now, without changing the radius of the compass, I'm gonna put my metal tip on this point where the line intersects with the circle. And I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna mark here and here. Now, what that does is this will help us draw a line that goes through the circle vertically. And the way that we do that is we're gonna go through the X here and the X here. Like this, and draw a line. You'll notice the line goes through the center of the circle. And now we have a circle that's divided into four equal parts. Now, the next part, the next thing I want to do is I want to draw a square. I wanna draw a square that goes around the circle. So the way that I'm gonna do that is I'm gonna take my compass and I'm gonna put it back on this point here where the line intersects with the circle and I'm gonna bring down the radius back to the original size, like this. And I'm going to draw about three quarters of a circle like this. And I'm gonna do that on this point here as well. I'm gonna put my metal tip here. My lead tip is gonna be in the center of the circle and I'm gonna draw about three quarters of a circle. I'm gonna do that again on these two points where the vertical line intersects with the circle. Put my metal tip here and I'm gonna draw three quarters of a circle and I'm gonna do that again here. Have my metal tip here, my lead tip in the middle. Now, it creates these sort of petal shapes here and we have four of them. If we connect the corners, we will get a square. I'm gonna use a red pen to connect the corners. You wanna take your time and be very precise so that you get a nice precise drawing in the end. Now, Islamic art is all about taking your time and focusing and drawing and it's a really meditative process. So here we have a square. Inside we have a circle divided into four equal parts. Now, you notice that the pattern had an eight-pointed star. So we wanna divide our circle into eight equal parts. So the way that we're gonna do that is we're gonna connect these two corners of the square and we're gonna draw a diagonal line. Remember to be as precise as you can and take your time. Now our circle is divided into eight equal parts. To draw the eight-pointed star, we're gonna have to draw another square inside the circle using these four points. I'm gonna use a blue pen to draw the square. Actually, I'm gonna use a pencil to draw the square and we'll use the blue pen to draw the final pattern. You wanna draw nice clean lines. I'm gonna draw another square that overlaps this first square and that's gonna give us our eight-pointed star and we're gonna use these four points here. This is called a dynamic square. A dynamic square is a square that's on a 90 degree angle and a static square is the first square that we drew. So these two overlapping squares create a eight-pointed star. I'm gonna use my blue pen and I'm gonna outline just the star. I'm not gonna draw the full square. So over here, I have the same drawing but it's on a much smaller scale and the reason why I have it on a much smaller scale is so that we can trace this pattern. We're gonna use some tracing paper. Now if you don't have tracing paper, you can also use parchment paper. It works just the same. So you're gonna place your tracing paper on top and you're gonna take a piece of tape, gonna tape it down and you're gonna use a soft pencil. A soft pencil is any pencil that has a B on it. So it could be a 2B pencil, a 4B pencil. If you don't have a soft pencil, that's fine. You just wanna draw darker lines and we're gonna outline just the star. Take your time and outline it with the ruler rather than doing it freehand. That will give you really clean and precise lines. So once I've outlined the star, I'm also going to outline the square. Although the square isn't part of our final pattern, it will help us tessellate the pattern. I'll show you how in just a moment. So once I have outlined the square and the star, I'm gonna remove my tracing paper and I'm gonna line it again. I'm gonna match the corners of the square and I'm gonna trace it again. So you see, we have eight stars and in between you have these beautiful cross shapes. Now, what we're gonna do with this tracing paper is we're gonna take a clean sheet of paper, we're gonna tape it down nice and firmly and we're gonna trace over it one more time. You wanna make sure that the side that you drew on is facing the paper so that when we draw on it again, the pressure from your pencil or pen is gonna transfer the lead on the tracing paper to the paper. Wanna use a ruler and applying some force, not too much, you don't wanna rip the tracing paper. You're gonna trace all of it again. And then once you're done, you wanna just remove the tape from one side so that you could peek under to see if you have the whole pattern. If you see that you're missing some spots, you can tape it back down without moving it and finish. Once you're done, you can remove it and since this hasn't filled up the entire paper, you can move it down, match the corners, that's why you wanna draw in the square and trace again until you have the desired amount of space covered. You'll notice that when tracing, you can trace multiple lines at the same time because when you align your ruler on one line, it aligns with many of the other lines. Now, you've transferred your pattern onto a clean sheet of paper without all those extra construction lines and the ink. So now you have a fresh start here where you can paint your pattern any way that you like or color it in using color pencils or markers. My name is Amina and thank you for following this video. I hope you get a chance to draw this pattern and I hope you get to enjoy the process and really take a moment to relax and take your time drawing and reflect and just think about the way that these lines intersect and create these beautiful geometric shapes and I hope you get a chance to paint it and color it in and make it your own work of art. Thank you.