lightweight

this is the top secret illustration from before. it hung for a long time on the school wall. now it proudly hangs at home. it wasn't actually top secret, i just didn't want to show it until it was finished. one of my friends says she wants to be the pink sheep, because that one looks the happiest.

digital painting is great, but i still love good old manual painting. brushes, acrylics and all.

doble

as i was blogging about our beloved trip, my video entries sunk deeper and deeper in the bottom, thus not getting a lot of visibility. i'm giving them one more chance. don't worry, i won't write double entries for everything.

hasta luego

i'm excited. as i decided before, i need to say goodbye to my bag once more, at least in this blog. so here is the two colored version. and it does fit in the little pocket on the right:)

hope you are doing well!

ruins

voila! my last entry on our trip. i'm not sure if i should create a separate blog for travel. are these entries damaging the design/animation focus of this blog? i don't know. keeping two separate blogs seems too much for me, though.

another nice lake called gökgöl. we saw black or common terns (edit: checked, and they are black terns, because the bills were black, not red) and observe their hunting and singing behaviors. we even saw orange-colored cattle egrets there.

usak was a little... fundamental for us.

if you happen to go to tavsanli, don't forget to stop by aizonai. it is a fantastic little historic site. such a surprise...

our last stop was delmece plateau (near tesvikiye village). it was foggy and cold and looked like a dutch landscape painting.

does birdwatching count as voyeurism?

our next target was olimpos. we took secondary roads again, passing through wonderful lakes and mountains.
we did see ferocious predators (i'm not sure if they were eagles) on the mountain road. we were lucky enough to see them with binoculars, but not fast and silent enough to take pictures.

a stork chorus was practising a canonical song:)

the lake avlan was bursting with bird species. even the burning heat couldn't stop us from enjoying this fairy tale spot.

this was by far the best moment of the whole trip (it was not the best artistic moment though, as you see). seeing a night heron just in front of our eyes. he just came flying, landed on that stick, and stood there for 15 minutes, leaving us time to enjoy his beauty.

here we are, in olimpos. can you guess which plant this is?

margharita

looking back, i miss our beloved trip so much. but i do enjoy working these days. so here we are, in datca again.

we went to marmaris as well for a night out. we weren't quite crazy about the impossibly touristic city. the bar we entered had some fireworks going on, though.

one mysterious dancer!

of course we had to build a sumo bunny of sand... she couldn't survive more than a couple of hours, though. when we came back after lunch, we found her kicked to death by some bully. grr.

settling in the peninsula

our next destination was datca (i have some problems with google maps by the way. can you see the locators?). my oh my! we wanted to drink the sea water. what an amazingly clean piece of nature! and how lovely people! and believe me, what we are eating in the city is shit compared to the food in datca.

this is old datca. all of the houses were made of stone. they used to be the villagers' homes, but were converted to trendy eco-tourism shops and ateliers.

i think it was a little windy at times.

what? of all the pictures you've taken, are you uploading this bug? yes, i am. this guy's movements and overall looks really struck me. he once tried to sleep in my shoe.

electric cables all around

my, writing travel entries takes long! now, i downsized the photos to be a little bigger. aqui, the second phase of our trip:

on our way to kula, we passed through extraordinary territory. at some point, there were rocks resembling fairy chimneys.

kula seemed to have a nice old town district. what absurd colors, materials and details once again!!
you know how i love sunset photos, don't you? i love them so much that i want to cover all my walls with the most cliché-looking sunset photos in the world. as we are about to arrive pamukkale (karahayit is more like it), and we are ridiculously exhausted, we can't help but capture this very moment.

asphalt eaters

alright, here are some photos from our beloved trip (some of them courtesy of hubby). i downsized them quite a bit, if it is too much, i'll try a bigger size next time. i will try to keep the entries simple, 3 photos maximum for each place, so you don't get bored to death!

so i have broken my own rule already. this photo has nothing to do with our last trip. so why did i put it here? no idea! it is from a trip on 23-25 april to assos. but my, what a surreal view!

ok, now for the real deal: this is simav, a lovely camping area near a lovely (and bird-laden) lake. we were there quite early, around 14:00. the pictures do there no justice, actually.

i told you i was going to birdwatch, and you didn't quite believe me, did you?. well, we did, and we saw soo many different fantastic birds. i could easily say that this was an amazing nature kind of trip. the little gal here was quite timid and we had a hard time photographing her.

after a comfy nights' sleep and lots of amazement, we continued our way to pamukkale. this photo was from a secondary road not so far from simav. most of the time our jaws dropped at how beautiful it was around (and yes, that is the windshield of a motorcycle:)

i will try to continue with one post each for every place we stayed over the next days. is this a travel blog? well, i don't know yet. stay tuned!

dangerous movements

a rattlesnake out of cardboard and newspaper. refillable marquers. colored pencils. a patient actor. simple lighting. tadaa! this is the second workshop video that i needed to upload, this time with 2.5 months delay. i think i might play around with this technique quite a bit. easy and fast. it was sooo much fun! what do you think?

misfit

once again it is time to make fun of my sewing skills. my shopping bag is here. believe it or not, it does carry quite heavy loads, considering it is only thick as a veil. and believe it or not, it does not fit in the pocket on the right. which it should, actually.

i will also make the bag two colored as in the previous presentations. i was quite surprised by the strength of the material, but also disappointed with the amount of space it takes. hm.. such is life. keep on trying, not?

the machine which you can partially see on the further right is, of course, the same guy mentioned looong before here. we still have a loving relationship, in spite of all his insistent attempts to consume my clothing.

ursa major

i've always found the name 'milky way' strange. when i look at the stars, i hardly see any milk. i don't see a bear when i look at 'great bear' either. maybe this has to do something with the available vocabulary at the time of them being named. to me, the milky way looks more like an icing sugar way. did they have icing sugar back then? hmmm.

anyway, i'm planning to change a lot of things in my life, beginning with the way i present my work. do you think this could work out? i would like this texture to stand out. could they be percieved as stars in space?

how do you present your work? it is a really hard thing to do for me, although i see that some people handle it quite smoothly. please tell me about your way!

a promise is a promise

hihi i told you that i would upload the videos from my workshops. this is the first one, coming with eight months delay. i hope i have been able to embed it correctly. there are some problems with the animations and timing (and the mug being moved by mysterious powers at one point), but please remember it was a two-hour workshop!! and i quite like the light, which was helped by dear hubby and one fellow colleague, who i thank a lot...so here you go:

inside out from meric taylan on Vimeo.

speed of light

how come i buy some binoculars the same time i'm planning a great trip? believe me, it was great. in fact, that's why i've been absent. because of the binoculars. we travelled around so many lovely places. i can't quite swallow that it's over. (gasps)