Syful Islam has done many portraits. Sometimes these paintings have been commissioned and at times they were created out of his own interest. He did portraits of people such as Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Huq, Moulana Bhasahani, Rabin-dranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Nasiruddin Ahmed, and other famous personalities. For his recent project, he has done 50 such portraits and hopes to make an album out of this for the young generation and expatriates. He also goes in for landscape, still life, and semi-abstract. "People still like realism and I do a lot of that," says Syful.

Syful, who studied commerce, has been doing paintings since he was a child and abandoned his studies to paint in 1969 when he moved to Dhaka. He got a scholarship to study fine arts in Moscow at the Surikov Institute. Twenty-three years ago he was commissioned to do Kalema Tayyab. His first calligraphy exhibition was held in 1983 on the occasion of the OIC conference. The artist has also participated in two local exhibitions and a calligraphy exhibition in Tehran. One of Syful's unique feats is Bangla calligraphy, which was introduced in 1990. He received a gold medal for his calligraphy in 1995.