The Open Studio / Riya
Riya
Your wings already exist all you have to do is fly
A butterfly waits at the edge of a sentence
Grey wings, ridged like folded paper, made with the side of a pencil.
A dark body striped with thin white gaps where the pen held back.
Flowers drawn in one black line, petals left mostly empty.
Below them the words lean and loop, big and then small.
The last word is drawn tall and heavy.
It waits at the bottom of the page, ready.
The work
Riya studies at Guru Nanak Girls College in Yamuna Nagar. In this drawing she joins calligraphy and illustration on one sheet of paper. A large butterfly fills the top of the page with flowers at its side. Below it the words run in several lettering styles. She draws the outlines in black gel pen and adds soft grey with a shading pencil. She chooses where each word sits so the writing and the drawing stay in balance. Some letters she repeats many times until she is happy with them.
In the artist’s words
“I wanted to make my work look attractive while keeping the message clear and easy to understand. I enjoyed choosing different lettering styles and thinking about how the words should be placed on the page. I tried to keep the design balanced so that the writing and decoration work well together. I repeated some letters until I was satisfied.”
- Theme
- Believing in yourself
- Material
- Black gel pen and shading pencil on paper
- Size
- 29.7 × 21 × 0.01 cm
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Guru Nanak Girls College
- From
- Yamuna nagar
- Code
- RC-490
