Shams Tabrizi was a Sufi mystic from Iran, teacher and friend of Jalaluddin Rumi, and the latter was transformed by their meeting. It was his grief over losing Shams that moved Rumi to write an outpour of what would become the world’s most loved poetry.
Shams (شمس) means “sun” in Arabic (his full name was Shamsuddîn, “Sun of the Faith”), and this guided the composition, where eight repetitions of the word share a single م .
The dots of the ش are integrated in the letter as the half-ellipses in the design on the right.
First set of baselines. Those to be later marked were scribed, as were the “dots”, because the gold would hide everything.
Close-up showing how my scribed lines show through the gold, allowing me to paint them over freehand.