The whole waterfront, end to end.
Ink line and watercolor wash, drawn on location from a folding stool and finished before the light changes. Forty-one cities, eleven years, and no pencil under any of it.
Twelve sketchbooks
Each one is a place I stayed long enough to get past the postcard. Newest first.
Lisbon
A steep tiled street with a tram climbing it, and the eleven attempts before the one that worked.
Istanbul
The one I never stop drawing: the Kadıköy terminal from the water, first Sunday of every month for eleven years.
Porto
Riverfront houses stacked up the hill, drawn from a rabelo boat that would not stay still.
Naples
Scooters, balconies and washing in the vicoli, drawn fast and in line because nothing there holds still.
The same view at three speeds
Every drawing is a trade between the clock and the detail. This is what each budget buys, and what it costs you.
20 min
The quick one
Line only. No wash, no crowd, no sky. Enough to remember the place by, and the one I make most often.
From $180
45 min
The usual
One wash pass over the line. Figures if they stay still, water if there is any, sky still bare paper.
From $340
2 hours
The full sheet
Three wash passes, the reflections, the worked sky and the whole block standing behind it.
From $720
All three are the same view of the Kadıköy terminal, drawn on three consecutive Sundays. Nobody asked for the third one.
Ninety minutes, no pencil
I draw in the street, in ink, with nothing underneath, and I finish before the light changes. Eleven years of it has taught me that the drawing you make in ninety minutes is almost always better than the one you make in four hours, because by the fourth hour you are drawing your own drawing instead of the thing in front of you.
The whole kit is a folding stool, a pocket tin of eight colors, two pens and whatever sketchbook is in the bag. It fits in a coat pocket, which is the only reason any of this exists.
Elif Demir
- Based Kadıköy, Istanbul
- Sketching since 2015
- Cities on location 41
- Longest single sitting 3 hours, once, in the rain
Four things I do
Location reportage
From $1,800 a dayA day or a week of drawing on site for a magazine, a festival or a city. I turn up, sit down, and come back with finished pages plus everything that did not make the cut.
Hotels and restaurants
From $2,400Drawings of a building, a room or the street it stands on, made for the wall they will hang on, sized and framed here, and delivered with the originals if you want them.
Workshops
$340 for two daysTwo days on location for ten people, in Istanbul most months and somewhere else three or four times a year. No experience assumed and no pencils allowed.
Licensing
From $450Existing sketchbook pages licensed for covers, guides, packaging and campaigns. Tell me the print run and the territory and I will send a figure the same day.
Three people who booked me twice
She drew our whole opening weekend in front of two hundred people and nobody looked at their phone. We have used the pages on everything since.
Ten students, two days, and every one of them left with a finished spread. I have run workshops for years and I have never seen a group get that far that fast.
We commissioned four drawings for the lobby and got a hundred and twenty pages of process with them. Guests ask about the sketchbooks more than the frames.
Where things stand
Taking two commissions
For spring 2027. Workshop dates are open now.
Naples, four weeks
Istanbul, monthly
Tbilisi edition
The Kadıköy drawing happens on the first Sunday whatever else is on.