This is a big piece I made back in 2016. Since then, I have sold many small prints of it, apparently a lot of people are in love with this drawing. Last week I had a great idea to make this design into one of my concertina books. Of course, the lay-out had to be adapted because the big design is square and my concertina books are oblong: 75 cm/14 cm. For those who are interested in hearing how I proceeded, read the entire working process below. 

I already have a nice scan of the first drawing of the square piece. I use my new photo editor Affinity to cut and paste all the elements, rearranging everything. Since the lettering is too big for the much smaller book, I rewrite it onto another piece of paper, knowing that the block has to fit in the middle part of the book. After that, I also scan this and then it's playtime,  puzzling can start! 
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Once I'm happy with the lay-out, I start drawing lines for the writing on the concertina book, using my fine pigment liner. I'm doing this first thing because there's always the risk of making mistakes! After that, I print the whole book - in parts - on regular printing paper, put them on the light box and transfer the nibs in pencil, then filling everything with the black pigment liners. It takes a lot of patience because of all the tiny letters but that's no problem, it calms me down! 

A few years ago, I made this spread in my big Moleskin sketchbook. These are all excerpts from a wonderful diary that my maternal grandfather left us. I picked some fragments to write down about him going to America with his family when he was only 17, but also about his experiences  during WW I when he  just returned from there. 

Now I'm working on a new concertina book about this America adventure, rearranging the fragments into another size of paper and leaving out the war-section. I added a small family tree for better understanding.

 At the end of last year, for several weeks, I used an app on my phone to record bird songs. I was quite curious about how many different birds would come to our garden or fly over? Every day, early in the morning, I put my phone on the windowsill for about 15 minutes and I must say, I was rather surprised about the result: 34 different species until now. We are not so very far from a few nature preserves and the birds are not all coming into the garden but still! This was a good starting point for a new concertina book and ... I learned a lot about birds, their names and how they look!

My latest concertina book is the prime example of achieving a satisfying outcome despite of having little or no inspiration. I started with the vintage safety match box - found on the net - because of the sunflower. The writing and painting tools followed. And in the end I added the calendar where I filled in everyday temperature, measured promptly at noon. The whole book forms a unity because of the color yellow. The more wintertime approaches, the more I feel the urge to use warm color schemes because it makes me forget cold and mist and rain and the early dark of winter's evening.

I like to draw plants in a medieval way ánd I love this poem from Edwin Morgan about strawberries. And so, the two came together in my sketchbook. Don't know if I'm going to add some colors or not, what do you think?
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Back in 2000 I designed this poetic text for a headstone. At the time I just started drawing Roman capitals. Looking back now, I'm not too disappointed but spacing between letters and words could be a lot better. I don't like the ligature on the second line and the tail of the R is too weak. This design would benefit to be improved :) The text is from a German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. Here it has been translated in Dutch, and I'll try to translate  into English, as good as I can : 

It is time
It was a great summer
Now put the shadow on the sundials
and let the wind float over the fields

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Two pages in my sketchbook. I have been re-working a stamps collection and chose for a limited color palette of 3 colors: orange, blue and light blue. I'm inspired by existing stamps but don't copy them. Some details are left out, certain fonts are adjusted and, anyhow, colors are customized. For orange and blue I used fine microns, light blue is executed in colored pencil.