Although my favorite color is yellow, I also like blue in all its different shades. And since I love patterns, the link was quickly made  to  draw  a range of vases, plates and Chinese porcelain. The philosophy behind also matters: being busy drawing feels like Zen meditation, where the goal is to achieve a state of inner peace and clarity. 

A glimpse into one of my small Moleskine sketchbooks. The only material I used here was a black fineliner. The texture of the paper is pleasantly soft and quite thick so that the ink doesn't bleed through. I love working in black and white but, on the otherhand, I am very fond of colors. Next time, I'll be posting some colorful pages in another Moleskine sketchbook.

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.

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

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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I'm into blue and white pottery these last few months. It's not that I go crazy over Chinese bone, but I admire those artists from the distant past who were incredibly talented and inventive and I love to immortalize their art in my sketchbook. The illustration is accompanied by an inspiring text about beauty from the book 'El Profeta' by Kahlil Gibran.
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I'm always inspired by nature, by plants and trees. And I keep coming back to the poems of Emily Dickinson because she was also a lover of nature. Sometimes when reading one of her poems, in my mind, I immediately see  what the following finished page in my sketchbook will look like. This illustration was done in one day, couldn't stop drawing. It's not always going smoothly like this though, sometimes I start a project, only terminating it after a long time.
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