To all my followers, wherever you are, I take this moment to not only wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, but also to thank you for all your support and encouragement throughout the year, be it on FB or IG or wherever! I'm looking forward to a great inspirational 2025 and may all your wishes come true! 
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In early summer I started this new project. I was going to make a new concertina book about insects in my own garden. So, every day for more than 3 months, I have been strolling in the garden, looking for any small creatures. Armed with my phone, I took pictures of snails, bees, bumblebees and beetles, butterflies and spiders, flies and mosquitoes. At first I was afraid that it wouldn't be possible to encounter a wide variety of insects but in the end, I'm quite happy with the result! Until now, I may be proud of the amazing amount of 72 different creatures with the most poetic Dutch names.

What to do if you are out of inspiration but you, at all cost, want to put that pen to the paper? My solution is to copy a nice black and white photo. You don't have to think a lot and meanwhile you keep busy! I first drew a grid with squares from 1 to 1 cm. I did it on the photo and on my paper. After that you can start filing in all the squares just as you see it on the photo. Here I used stippling. Stippling is a drawing technique in which areas of light and shadow are created using nothing but dots. The basic idea is simple: for darker areas, you apply a greater number of dots and keep them close together. Then for progressively lighter areas, use fewer dots and space them farther apart. Below is the picture of my mother.  Underneath is my grandfather, the first portrait I made, using this technique. I realize now that the one with my grandfather was a lot easier to draw.

A small selection of the exhibited work:

                                                                    Elmo Van Slingerland                                                                                                                                                    Werner Schneider

                                                                                                                                                                              John Stevens

                  Kevin Cribb                                                                                 Kristoffel Boudens                                                                                                       Tom Perkins

                                                                                                         Sepp Jacob                                                                                                                                                                      Pieter Boudens

                                                                 Katharina Pieper                                                                                                                                                                               Sarah More

                                                                       Christine Wagner                                                                                                                                                            Leonid Pronenko

A simple pencil drawing can be so satisfying. Slowly and carefully drawing, focusing on the area just below the pencil, observing every detail of the subject. I try to draw every day. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist is the architect of the notion of  FLOW, which is “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” And an old Chinese saying, quoted by David Hockney, says: “Drawing needs three things, the heart, the hand and the eye, two won’t do.” 

This time, no sketch in the usual black, but a nice brown color. When I was teaching in Los Angeles a few years ago, I bought a whole number of pigment liners, in a variety of colors. I never used these brown microns until now and I think they give something extra to the drawing. As you can notice, they are the very fine ones, the 0,05 series.

How inspiring our garden is this time of the year! At the center of the picture below, you can see the Aralia elata, a multi-stemmed tree with its beautiful autumn discoloration and, in my view,  an indispensable tree for any garden. The white flowers  bloom  in late summer with large panicles and are quite showy and very attractive to bees. These flowers are followed by clusters of small black berries that ripen from late summer into fall and are quite attractive to birds. 

I started a small concertinabook with all of the gardening tasks I should carry out this autumn and maybe winter. Fingers crossed that it doesn't keep raining as it has recently. The garden is very argillaceous and therefore not fun to walk through! 

Cet été j'ai eu la chance d' animer un atelier dans un de mes régions préférées de la France, le Provence. Le petit village nommé Lurs était un rêve de paix en pleine nature provençale et, pour cela, très inspirant. 

Et oui, tous ces livres accordeon sont le travail de mes excellents étudiants. J'espère qu'ils ont autant appris de moi que moi j'ai  appris  d'eux! Chaque jour était un délice même avec la chaleur intense. Un très grand merci à cette compagnie internationale:  Jean-Luc, Suzanne, Françoise, Sylvie, Francisco, Aurélie, Philippe, Francesca et Sylvie, et une sincère reconnaissance à Philippe et Cristine pour la parfaite organisation du stage!