Arabic calligraphy has witnessed a revolutionary revival in recent years, transforming from a historical architectural tradition to a modern form of urban expression.

This transformation was popularized by Tunisian-French graffiti artist El Seed, whose thought-provoking works combining historical Arabic calligraphy and modern graffiti plaster the walls of buildings around the world.

Palestinian artist Belal Khaled is taking it one step further, using not just the walls of buildings for his Arabic calligraphy designs, but cars, accessories, streets and even human skin.

Using markers among other tools, Khaled draws and paints intricate designs of urbanized Arabic calligraphy on a wide variety of everyday objects in the streets of Gaza, turning them into works of art.

In one of Khaled's endeavors, he painted a large blue and white calligraphy design on the ground of a Gaza street to beautify it for passersby. In another, he turned an unassuming white car into a customized calligraphy artwork, using only a black marker.

In his project titled "Calligraphy Bodybuilding," Khaled drew Arabic calligraphic designs on the bodies of members of the Palestinian national bodybuilding team.

"Arabic script is strong and I wanted to connect it to physical strength. I drew on chests and backs of body-builders," Khaled told Reuters, adding that he wants to "spread art everywhere I can get to."

Given his flexibility on choice of object, Khaled started adorning women's accessories with his calligraphic designs for local retail outlets, which became quite popular with both the retailers and their customers.

"Many of the customers liked the bags and they constantly requested it, they liked this work so this opened up other opportunities for me to expand on the products I work on," said Khaled, who has plans to introduce his work to fashion design as well.

In addition to his calligraphy work, Khaled is also a professional photographer and graphic designer, he documented the 2014 Gaza war through both skills.

In his project titled "Gaza War Art," Khaled turned the smoke in photos of the shelling of Gaza into illustrated stories, in an attempt to portray the resilience and hope that lie beyond the destruction.

Commenting on the project, he wrote: "The reason that pushed me to this style of drawing is that this is a message that the people of Gaza can not be silenced."

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