Matryoshka

I bought this matryoshka or Russian nested doll at a market in Abu Dhabi. These sets of wooden dolls were first carved in Russia in the nineteenth century and the creator was apparently inspired by a Japanese doll, perhaps a daruma. (Though I don’t know who made this particular doll or where it was made.)

Typically the outer doll is a Russian woman in traditional peasant dress but here she is an Arab woman in an abaya – I think this abaya is meant to suggest a traditional burqa worn by older married women (and those in rural areas) in the UAE (and also in Qatar and Oman, and by Arabs in southern Iran). But I don’t think an older and more conservatively dressed woman would wear her abaya open like that – though she may have something as garishly bright and patterned on underneath, who knows..?

Living in the Middle East, I was often surprised at the range of abayas (and other kinds of outer garments that women and girls there wear to cover themselves) and how colourful and intricately patterned they can be.

Perhaps that’s why I like the colours of these – that and the flash of what lies underneath..!

You can find out more about matryoshka and hijab on Wikipedia.

A little vampire

This little vampire was created by one of my students who was a whiteboard whizz and crazy about manga and anime.

She created a few of these chibi over the three years I taught in the Middle East – at break or at the end of the day, crowded round by a group of younger girls, oohing and aahing their approval.

This little vampire stayed up for weeks and weeks as I was under strict instruction from my form not to erase it. One of my quietest students, always doodling during lessons herself, took it upon herself to personally guard our classroom chibi against any colouring in or scribbles, checking at the end of each day and carefully erasing any mischief-making.

Much later, after I’d left the school, I thought I’d give her something in return. I’d never drawn any manga and wouldn’t have known where to begin but I thought I’d have a go, using her characters to guide me, just for fun. So this is my attempt.

And I had such fun with it that weekend, my niece (who was nine at the time) and I sitting drawing characters for hours together. Who knew what a doodle would lead to?

(And, since all that doodling has lead to my whiteboard whizz studying multimedia design this year, I look forward to seeing what else it leads to...)

Class of 2011

These are some sketches I’ve done for my kind-of-comic – they’re some of the girls from the class of 2011. I taught them for three years when I lived in the Middle East. Full of fun and mischief, they made me laugh – and they made me blush! – and they made me cry – and they made me go a little bananas at times! I watched them grow, and they let me grow as a teacher and make mistakes when I also had a lot to learn. I love them to bits, beautiful girls.