Born in the needlessly moody isles of the UK, Ibraheem Qureshi firmly believes that stories are a doorway to the soul. So why not add a dragon or two to make things interesting?
At first, there lay a little flame inside of Ibraheem. It flickered and burned and wouldn’t let him concentrate, not until he fed it. Legos, clay, pencil, paper and all manner of odd books and bobs were used as kindling to feed the little fire. It beckoned him towards the art of creation. But he also had an urge to be useful, and he was told that art was anything but that.
And so he studied mechanical engineering, seeking to understand the way things worked. He quickly learned that there was little creativity in the orderly numbers and endless equations and the term ‘useful’ was much more vast than he originally thought. But he understood a little more. And for that he was grateful.
Alongside the art of order (a much cooler name for engineering) and an addiction for Dungeons and Dragons, Ibraheem taught himself to paint and draw and design. And among the wonderful new and fresh methods of expression he learned another truth. Another layer to himself.
Creation must have meaning. It must tell a story. He wanted to tell more than a single picture. The blaze within developed a hunger for the histories of old Arabia and the incredible legends of his faith. He devoured mythologies and fantasy novels on dragons and harpies and rings of power.
Eventually he yearned to tell his own story. A love letter to his roots, to his passions, to golden sands and algebra, to great Djinn and marvellous clockwork. And so he put pen to paper and wrote a tale: Of Soul and Steam.
