The sunny start of a new day in my studio!  I have plenty of ideas and want to make them all come to life. But why do I always feel like life is too short? 

Our good friend Brody Neuenschwander gave me this wonderful book as a Christmas gift. It's about garden design, and this happens to be a big area of interest of mine. I want to make something in relation to gardens, maybe a print or a series of greeting cards!

I love butterflies and I never get tired of painting them. Here's two details of a concertinabook I made in 2009.

It requires a lot of work and time to come to a final piece. Lots and lots of trials and errors before a piece is finished. Not to mention countless sleepless nights. Now and then I have to clean up my studio and make decisions of what to keep and what to throw away. 

Since 2001 I'm making these oblong concertina books. The term 'concertina' refers to a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front. This picture shows a detailed view of two of these books. Mustn't read too much into it: the top one is just a compilation of different paintings and text blocks without any cohesion. The only consistency would be color. The bottom one is about an long adventurous  trip I made from Belgium to Iran. 

I love folk art. About three weeks ago I was in New Mexico and I visited the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. Textiles from India, figurative wood carving from Poland, U.S. visionary and self-taught art, Japanese woodblock prints, Indonesian shadow puppets and many other objects: more than 130,000 from more than 100 countries. A really fascinating museum! A collection of ex votos immediately caught my attention. Were they made of metal or silver? Were they factory-made  or hand-crafted? I don't know but I could see they were embossed. I've seen collections like this before in other countries. I love all the different shapes of hands and thought it was a good idea to draw a collection of them. I first drew them with my favorite fineliners and then painted them in with a wash of watercolor paint.

 

This was one of those moments of tidying up my drawing folders, finding a whole lot of pieces of paper with trials and testings from over the last fifteen years and having to decide whether to keep them or throw them away. Well, in the meantime most of them are gone but I've made some pictures of everything because they can inspire me for future pieces.  Next time I'll post some other ones!

Watercolor painting of a twig of eucalyptus, with credits to Lupen Grainne who's photo I was allowed to use as a reference: thank you Lupen! I love the greyish color of the leaves with the bright red branches.

Aquarel van een takje eucalyptus, met dank aan Lupen Grainne voor het gebruik van haar foto als referentie: dankjewel Lupen! Ik hou heel erg van de grijzig groene kleur van de bladeren samen met de felrode steeltjes.

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I started this painting because of the beautiful shaped leaves of the Adiantum. The common name of this plant is 'maidenhair fern', isn't that fairy-like! And it's only by painting this lacy beauty that I noticed the leaf shapes are very similar to the shapes of a Ginkgo Biloba leaf but then much smaller. I know that because I've painted lots and lots of ginkgo leaves in the last few years. I added another plant with fine, needle-like leaves: the asparagus. A wild plant and family of our well-known asparagus with edible shoots.

Ik begon dit kleine aquarel vanwege de prachtig gevormde bladeren van de Adiantum. De Nederlandse sprookjesachtige naam van deze plant is 'venushaar'! En door deze kanten schoonheid te schilderen merkte ik op dat de bladvorm erg lijkt op de vorm van een Ginkgo Biloba blad maar dan veel kleiner. En daarvan heb ik er de afgelopen jaren heel veel geschilderd. Ik zette er nog een plant naast met fijne, naaldachtige bladeren: de asperge. Een wilde plant en familie van onze bekende asperge met de eetbare scheuten.

Over the last two weeks, I have been enjoying the sunny moments of spring. As a result, it has inspired me to spend more time outside, looking at those beautiful blossoms and blooming of trees, and smelling the freshly cut grass. So for today's post, I thought I would share with you a selection of different berries that are inspiring me, now that spring is in the air. You can see a picture of the work before and after text is added. It looks very easy but there's a lot of thinking and puzzling to it. I made 4 different versions before I ended up with this arrangement. I like the words to be curved rather than straight. It has a more organic look don't you think?

In de laatste twee weken heb ik genoten van de lentezon. Ik heb meer tijd buitenshuis doorgebracht om naar die prachtige bloemen en bottende bomen te kijken en de geur op te snuiven van vers gemaaid gras. De lente hangt in de lucht en daarom post ik vandaag twee foto's van een werkje waarop een variatie aan bessen. Een foto vóór en een foto nadat er tekst is toegevoegd. Het ziet er heel makkelijk en natuurlijk uit, maar het vergt veel denk- en puzzelwerk. Ik maakte 4 verschillende versies vooraleer ik tot deze lay-out kwam. De uitvoering met de gebogen woorden vond ik tenslotte de beste keuze. Het geheel heeft een meer organische uitstraling, vinden  jullie ook  niet?