Elif Mercan

We've met Elif, an illustrator passionate about jazz music

IJ-First of all, tell us something about yourself, when did you started doing illustrations?

Hello!Actually I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I could remember, I’ve been designing t-shirts and posters for ten years, but I met the illustration world a year ago. The reason for this is that my discipline is actually chemistry and materials science and I could not get around to drawing illustrations during my undergraduate and graduate studies. Now, illustration is a priority in my life, I prepare illustrations for magazines. I continue to learn something new in each new drawing.

IJ-After this introduction, let’s focus on the jazz music now, how did you discovered this world? What are your favorite musicians?

In fact, since childhood I am a good music listener. I have listened to progressive rock-metal, and blues for many years and discovered jazz music in the process (though I cannot remember the exact time). Since then, jazz music has become a favorite genre among the types of music I listen to. While I listening to jazz music, I feel that each instrument played in the song carries its own message rather than contributing the main theme of the song or making the song “perfect”. So, sometimes when I listen to a jazz piece I realize that I am listening to the movement of a single instrument throughout the song. After listening to each instrument one by one, listening to the whole of that song is a great pleasure. This allows me to get lost in a jazz song over and over again and reach the whole at the end. This is sort of fun for me and a “game of rediscovering” that only applies to jazz.

My favorite musicians… This is a very difficult question. Because there are successful musicians who play different instruments, and instruments have different characters in subgenres of jazz music, and I don’t know how I should prioritize them. Maybe I can roughly say; Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.

IJ-Do you play any instrument? Do you like live music?

I played bass guitar with our band for a while. I haven’t been actively playing in a group since university years. I like live music, trying to go concerts because I am primarily interested in live performances of the artists I love. I prefer to listen or watch to concert recordings rather than studio recordings on YouTube.

IJ-Going back to your activity as illustrator, what helps you in finding the inspiration? How do you choose your subjects?

The expression of animal or human being you see, or the voice of human and animal, the sound of vehicle you hear… All of them can be reflected on a paper as forms and colors. It means that everything that is perceived by one or more of five senses is suitable to be transferred on paper through form and color. In the case of jazz music; the sound of the instrument combines with the emotional expression of the performer and the soul of the music piece, and this “unified thing” can be transformed into a motif of colorful patterned painting or into a turbulent movement of a black ink on the paper. So when I listen to a jazz song, forms and colors conjure up as a vivid pattern; or when I watch the performer of the song, the portrait or posture of her/him is colored with specific colors in my mind. Therefore; that day's mood affects the songs I listen to or concert videos I watch, so expressions and sound that I perceived decide the form and color of the illustrations I will produce on that day.

Probably, you have experiencing the same thing: After an event, a song comes to your mind.If you keep singing the same song, you sing similar songs all day and you cannot leave that mode. This is how the production process works. This is a kind of cycle in which the modes of the songs determine the songs of the modes. I create a key to make it possible to enter and escape from this loop by drawing. So drawing allows me to define the time I want to stay in that loop. The illustration which is the product of the loop is a kind of thanks to the jazz musician I draw.

About:

Elif Mercan was born in Tekirdağ in 1991. She is a daughter of an immigrant family from Bulgaria. She got bachelor’s degree in Chemistry department of Bilkent University. In her undergraduate years, she designed for Mavi Jeans Istanbul T-shirts Collection. She worked as a research assistant during graduate research and received master’s degree in Micro and Nanotechnology. She currently lives in Ankara, and continue to work as designer and illustrator in various magazines.

Contact and social media accounts:

Email: sanemelifmercan@gmail.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jazz.bokeh.illustration

Behance: https://www.behance.net/elifmercan