Blog Posts

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.

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When spring is coming, I feel like being in the garden, smelling the first flowers, having the delight of watching ladybirds, bees and even a few butterflies. Time to prune lavender, roses, butterfly trees and eucalyptus. I made this concertina book last year in the springtime and it makes me realize how time flies!

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My concertina books are too long in size, so I have to show them in smaller parts. Otherwise minor details are being lost. Each book measures 75 cm (29.5") with a height of 14 cm (5.5"). For this one, I only used black pigment liners, some watercolor for the yellow bits and I worked on cold pressed paper which, as you can see, has a rough surface.

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This space control toy in bright turquoise blue dates back to ca. 1950. I'm planning making many more drawings of old toys because of a sense of nostalgia. No one better than Bill Bryson to describe the spirit of time of the 50's and 60's:
"I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy-five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a jelly-o lens. I knew how things tasted, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons ..."
This passage comes from "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", a book from 2006, describing Bill's youth growing up during the 1950s. Highly recommended! For this drawing I used some Posca's and I refined the details with colored pencils.

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I'm a nature lover and a keen gardener and when I encountered this beautiful quote while surfing on the internet, I immediately knew I wanted to do something with it! When I make an illustration like this, in my sketchbook, I always start drawing a few small details in pencil, tracing the outlines with my fineliner and filling in the background, all with the same fine pigment liner. I never have a plan set out in advance, so I just draw and make it up as I go, and each decision I make creates a kind of set of rules to follow.

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GRANDFATHER'S PAINTING

13/1/2022

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This cute small painting is by my maternal grandfather and is about a tragic event that he might have witnessed when he was a child. He tells a whole story in just one image. It has been painted in 1925, so between the two wars. I really love the color palette, with all the black-white-grey tones and then the small orange circle of the crescent moon.

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FINELINER PORTRAIT

8/12/2021

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Years ago, I made this portrait of my paternal grandfather but never finished it. The intention is to add his name and some other text, although I don't know what yet. Anyhow, I want it to have the look of art nouveau style, with some decoration added. This was one of the first times I used stippling to create a portrait. It takes many hours of work but the advantage is that you can work for very short periods now and then and to me it is most relaxing!

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OUR CAT

24/11/2021

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Recent painting of our 'granny' who turns 20 next year but still looks young! I painted her, as well as the background, with gouache and added some pattern using different cheerful Posca colors.

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THE WORK OF MY GRANDFATHER

10/11/2021

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My grandfather Robert Uleyn, my mother's father, was a Sunday painter. This means he was a non-professional painter and unschooled. His true profession was being a schoolteacher and he painted during his spare time. My youngest brother Kristoffel is the lucky owner of his sketchbook. Below you see some pages of this small book. Sometimes he made preliminary sketches with the aim of painting it at a later stage. I put some sketches next to the painting. I love the annotations of the colors he wanted to use.