International student Suran Dawood from Dubai in the Arabian Peninsula will be presenting some of his latest artwork and the stories of how he found the inspiration behind them on Tuesday.

Dawood will be presenting his collections “The Artist and the Mermaid Eyes” and “A Bird with Blue Blood” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Lecture Hall of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

Dawood has two series of paintings and will tell how he came up with the idea for each series.

The series “The Artist and the Mermaid’s Eyes” tells the story of an orphan boy who was inspired by the sea. The boy loved painting the ocean and the color blue, Dawood said.

The painting also tells the story of a boy who is searching for a girl with eyes that are green, purple and a little bit of blue, he said.

Dawood said all the paintings will be in abstract, except the last three, which will be done in the realist style.

Dawood said he was inspired by seeing his reflection in the eyes of a girl he was playing volleyball with.

“It was a real story that became a fiction story and then became 28 paintings,” Dawood said.

The series “A Bird with Blue Blood” tells of a bird that has a dream of his soul mate. The bird travels around the world in search of his woman and finally finds her, but she is with another lover, Dawood said.

“The story goes from a dream with hope to reality and back to a dream but without hope,” Dawood said.

The series goes from abstract painting to realism back to abstract.

Dawood said his inspiration came from a real dream and experience that he went through.

“My experience with inspiration is just something hitting me from the outside and give me everything,” Dawood said.

Dawood said he wants to show the audience the difference between artists and painters. He said artists are inspired and do something new while painters use ideas of others.

“In the end it will tell you when there is real inspiration and when there is some painter that looks at pictures and try to copy,” Dawood said.

Dawood said he hopes students can learn to find inspiration without copying someone else’s work.

“Anyone can have the skill to be a painter, but it is not easy to get real artist, because a real artist is someone who has inspiration,” Dawood said. “Inspiration guides him to everything, so he doesn’t have to look to Picasso’s work, or other artist works.”

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-7942 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.