Ayse Sule Ekiz | Painting & Charcoal

Painting & Charcoal

Painting is where I work closest to feeling. Most of these pieces were made late at night, from memory or imagination, trying to hold onto a color, a mood, or a moment before it disappeared. I paint things I've seen and things I've only felt. Often I don't know until the piece is done.

Paintings

Painting has always been my way of blending memory, emotion, and atmosphere into a single frame. Whether using oil, gouache, or pastel, each piece becomes a quiet conversation between color and light, moments that feel familiar yet dreamlike. Many of these works were created during late nights, drawing inspiration from moonscapes, friendships, and places that shaped who I am.

Girl & Moon

Oil painting on canvas exploring cool lunar light against warm skin tones and soft gradients.

This piece was painted during a full moon night in 2023, after watching The Tale of Princess Kaguya. I imagined the girl and the moon as reflections of each other – one in the sky, one on earth – quietly mirroring the same lonely glow. The soft edges, dark blues, and warm highlights are meant to feel like a dream you just woke up from but still don’t want to let go of.

Angel & Moon

Pastel illustration on toned paper focusing on layered light, soft blending, and gentle highlights.

I wanted this angel to feel like she can only rest when wrapped in moonlight – as if the sky keeps her secrets safe. The glowing halo around the moon and the soft folds of her wings aim to create a quiet, weightless moment, like time has slowed down just for her. I used a dark pencil for the sketch of the angel, and vibrant pastels for the sky and her hair, this creates contrasts and makes the angel feel otherworldly.

Friends

Gouache painting based on a Bosphorus trip reference photo, studying backlighting and reflections.

This piece is a love letter to a simple moment with friends – the kind you only realize was important much later. The water, the boat, the city and nature in the distance… all of it became a soft backdrop so their silhouettes and shared laughter could be the real focus. I wanted the scene to feel like a sun-faded memory you happily revisit again and again.

Pastel / #1

Soft pastel on blue watercolor paper, focusing on vibrant lighting and layered color transitions.

Using a blue base let the lights of the coastal town glow more intensely, almost like they’re floating on the water. This piece was inspired by Manarola – a place I’ve never visited in person, but often visit in my imagination. The stacked houses, tiny windows, and bright reflections become a quiet, dreamy maze of light and shadow.

Pastel / #2

Soft pastel on blue watercolor paper inspired by my hometown mountains and atmospheric depth.

These mountains come from childhood memory more than reality – in my mind they were always as big and dramatic as Mt. Fuji. I wanted the sky to feel wide and the land to feel small, like the world is both familiar and a little overwhelming. It’s a quiet landscape, but for me, it holds the feeling of going home after a long time away.

The Hike

Acrylic landscape on canvas capturing a glacial lake framed by ancient trees and snow-dusted peaks.

This piece came from a longing for places that feel untouched, where the path winds down toward water so still and turquoise it almost doesn’t look real. The two trees on either side act as a natural frame, drawing the eye inward toward the mountain and the glowing lake below. Pink wildflowers dot the foreground like small sparks of joy, and the whole scene carries the feeling of a hike that earned its view, lungs burning, legs heavy, but the moment you break through the treeline and see the water stretching out before you, everything goes quiet. I wanted to hold that moment in paint.

Night Sea

Acrylic painting of a moonlit sea, capturing the pull between absolute darkness and a luminous cyan sky.

This piece came from the feeling of standing somewhere dark and vast where the only light is above you and its reflection below. The moon doesn’t illuminate so much as it reveals — the sea dark and unknowable except for that single streak of gold crossing toward you. I was drawn to the contrast of the cyan and teal sky against the absolute black around it, how the clouds seem to curl inward like they’re protecting the light. The small bright flecks on the water feel like distant stars that got tired and fell.

Venus After Botticelli

Colored pencil reinterpretation of the Birth of Venus face, tracing the line between classical homage and personal expression.

Working from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, I was drawn to reinterpret her face through bold outlines and flat color fields rather than the soft gradients of the original. The teal and deep green hair feels more alive to me than gold — something between mythological and contemporary. The warm background echoes the original’s glow while the simplified linework makes her feel like someone you might actually meet, not just an ideal. She’s still Venus, but she’s also her own person now.

Charcoal Sketches

Charcoal sketching allows me to strip everything down to the essentials: light, shadow, and form. With no color to rely on, every stroke becomes intentional, capturing emotion through contrast alone. These pieces were my first explorations into charcoal, where I learned how expressive simple values can be, turning quick studies into quiet, intimate portraits.

Charcoal Drawing

Charcoal still life study of a bottle composition, focusing on value range, edges, and reflections.

This was my first charcoal drawing, and I loved how everything became about light and shadow. The bottles started to feel like quiet characters standing in the dark, holding their own little pockets of light. It taught me how dramatic a simple arrangement can become when the world around it fades into deep gray.

Sketch / #1

Graphite and charcoal portrait sketch emphasizing facial structure, shading, and contrast.

This sketch was an experiment in letting strong shadows define the mood of the face. By deepening the darks and softening some edges, the figure starts to feel like someone you might recognize, but can’t quite place – a familiar stranger from a dream you almost remember. I wasn't professional by any means when I started sketching, so you can see the etched paper for my math class, but I think it adds an extra layer to my artistic journey and its story.

Sketch / #2

Graphite sketch with charcoal accents, focusing on hair texture and subtle expression.

Here I focused on capturing that quiet, in-between expression – not fully smiling, not fully serious. The loose lines and soft smudges are meant to feel like thoughts that haven’t been spoken yet, hanging lightly in the air around the subject. But the dark pencil creates great contrast regardless.

Unraveling

Graphite drawing of a face with hollow eye sockets and a third eye on the forehead, tears streaming from all three in continuous flowing lines.

The face has no eyes — only hollow sockets — and a third eye opens on the forehead where there is no socket to contain it. From all three, tears and lines pour downward without stopping, becoming hair, becoming the neck, becoming nothing in particular. The third eye feels like the one that actually sees; the others are just where feeling used to live. I was thinking about what it means to grieve something you can’t name — how the body keeps producing the symptom even when the cause has gone unidentified. The streams don’t resolve. They just keep going.

Sketch / Mika

Anime-style graphite portrait of Mika from Seraph of the End, focusing on clean line work.

This was my first time fully committing to an anime-style sketch. Mika’s character carries so much tragedy and softness at the same time, and I wanted that mix to show in his eyes. The sharp lines around the hair and collar contrast with the softer shading of the face, echoing the tension between his gentle heart and the world he’s trapped in.

Girl Sketch Study

Four gestural pencil studies of women, each tilting upward in a different posture of longing, wonder, or surrender.

These four faces were drawn in one sitting — a quiet conversation with expression and angle. Each figure tilts differently: the first composed and direct, the second tilting back in full surrender, the third with a bob cut looking up as if toward something she’s been waiting for, the fourth more private, her hand near her face. There’s something about the upward gaze I keep returning to — it feels like hope, or prayer, or just the act of not wanting to look at what’s directly in front of you.

Sketch / Taehyung

Graphite and charcoal portrait study of Taehyung from BTS’s “Blood Sweat & Tears” era, with subtle wing detail.

I wanted this sketch to feel like a moment between innocence and temptation, just like the “Blood Sweat & Tears” era. The faint suggestion of wings behind him is intentionally unclear: are they really there, or just something the viewer projects? That ambiguity between good and evil, purity and sin, is what makes this piece so fascinating to me.