Artist Focus: Ege Karadayı

I'm Ege. I am currently living in Ankara with my 3 cats.

This is my work place, but I can't say that I can always use it effectively. Sometimes I prefer to work on the dining table in the living room, and if I am working on a tablet, I prefer to spread out on the sofa. I like to work on papers and notebooks the most. My desk is often messy, everything is everywhere and still dirty.

I don't know if it's my curse or my luck, but I draw in many different styles. This is not only valid for books, it is also reflected in my notebook scribbles. When I read the text sent to me during my book illustration process, I think the book already reveals its color, name, body, life, emotions 😊 I can claim that even the author's soul permeates between the words. That's why I usually don't sketch too much. I believe that if I love the story a lot, I can give more of myself.

Apart from books and drawings, music occupies the biggest part of my life. I've been listening to metal since I was 13 years old, not counting my amateur bands in high school, I've been playing music professionally for 7-8 years. I have two bands. One is Inhuman Depravity, we do technical brutal death metal; we have 2 albums. The other one is Abolish, we do old school death metal, we just released an album. You can find them on Spotify.

I have been involved with ceramics for the last 3 years. While it was a hobby that I started as a distraction, it started to go one step above that. Especially for someone like me who has severe concentration problems, working with ceramics, although challenging at times, has had a serious impact on my life. Recently, I have been combining clay with my drawings.

I can't say specifically what inspires me. Everything in life can be inspiring when the time comes. I have believed in interdisciplinary art since my university years, and I try to reflect this in my own work as much as I can. I am trying to train myself and my eye. Trying to draw "like a child" in children's books actually strengthens the language of expression. I actually work with the question "how can I explain it more simply".

The book The Cat and the Devil (illustrated by Gerald Rose) taught me very sharply that expression and line don't always have to be tied to one thing, and that I should do what comes from my heart. (I also admire James Joyce). If I have to answer in terms of nourishment, I watch cartoons, comics, interdisciplinary artists, nature and people. I really love comics! I'm especially a big Dylan Dog fan.

I think everything in our lives is a means of expression. Our clothes, our belongings, our words, our body language... And I see them as materials. I think drawings are the same way. While we use multiple instruments when we try to express ourselves -let me speak for myself- my drawings actually progress in the same way. That's why I like working with mixed media more. Maybe it's a romantic answer, but when being human is complex enough, using only one medium is not enough for me.

In the video you saw, I put mud on my sketchbook and chose to draw on it. Could it have been better? Of course, there is always something better.

The materials I used are ink, acrylic pigment, gouache paint, pitt pen, aquarell pen. In short, whatever I could find on the table 😊