Artist Focus: Seda Çubukçi Antlı

Hello everyone:)

I am Seda aka vakurfırça. I live in Istanbul and I do all my work in this tiny room. I work outside from time to time, but I spend the most time in this room.

The fact that my desk sees directly outside makes me very comfortable. I love to work during the day and early in the morning with a nice coffee. It is very important for me to have sound in the background while drawing something. Youtube content, especially caravan, travel, watching daily vlogs are among my favorites, I watch a lot of movies and series.

I usually work digitally, especially the projects that come in, i.e. children's books, I work with the iPad, which is practical and useful in terms of time. But the taste of traditional work is very different, it is like a complete pleasure and purification session.

I usually read the text as a printout and write notes on it, this is how I like to work. I read the text many times and the notes I take are very useful for the draft stage. My color palette is usually warm colors, yes, I am a lover of warm colors, I can say that earth colors are equal to me. Tile, yellow, orange, brown are among my favorites.

I often travel with the motivation of seeing new places. I love traveling. New people, new environments increase my motivation. Life is a journey and it is up to us to live this journey stagnant or moving. I attribute my different perspective mostly to this, I don't wait for things to happen from where I sit, I’m on the move and I strive, I don't give up.

As a female illustrator living in Turkey, I have to produce, I have to improve myself more. Because we have to strive for our future, for brighter days. Now is the time to set new routes. I guess a little inspiration and a lot of art is what I need.

Traveling is what inspires me the most. Seeing and discovering new places opens my horizons. Every new city means a new place design, every new person means new characters, so I try to travel as much as possible. I love being in nature and its energy. That energy gives me the message that you should draw something new and I listen to that message 😊

Besides that, being at home gives me pleasure, taking care of home decoration is among my favorite hobbies, cooking and of course food 😊

We do a lot of character work in children's book projects. Finding and drawing the hero of a story is one of the most important stages for us, so sometimes we make more than one attempt and sometimes we make stocks as in this video 😊 I used dry paint as a brush and the result was very colorful characters. In the old aunt's scarf, I used the masking technique, again, the lines are generally oval, and the colors are mainly warm tones to make them look friendlier.