The first thing that one would notice about my Illustrator project is that most of it seems to be in a strange, foreign language. This is, in fact, the case. The language in question is a conlang (constructed language) called Sekir. Along these lines, my choice of title for this piece is “Sekir musings”. I chose the phrases along the outer edge because they have personal significance, and represent a part of myself and my personality. Since mystery is a great part of art, I will only transcribe the phrases, and not translate them. If the reader wishes to understand, they can spend time learning a new language, which is an extremely rewarding activity. They read, “Qu ī het kral maut sisk a'ī saum” and “Qu ī lar maqmad sisk a'ī saqauī”. The word repeating around the design transcribes as “ma'ī”, and means “soul”. I felt this was an important enough term to be repeated multiple times, as the soul is arguably the most important part of a person, their essence. The character in the center is the Japanese kanji for Kitsune, which, to me, represents the necessary hope for magic in the world and an escape from the stifling confines of relentless humanity.
I used Illustrator to create this project. This project was designed to be engraved onto a mobile device. I used the pencil tool for the Sekir writing, as it performs better than the brush tool in most situations. The calligraphy in the center was made by using the text tool, and the rest was made with the pen tool. I used repeating transform effects on groups to copy the repeating designs into a circular pattern.
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