Blog - JOKE BOUDENS LETTERING

Published on: May 10, 2025

SKETCHBOOK

Here are 12 spreads in my Moleskine book. All very different besides maybe the patterns. I still do a lot of lettering but calligraphy pens are not in the picture anymore. Nowadays, I mostly use fine pigment liners, gouache, watercolor, colored pencils and Posca pens.

Published on: October 2, 2024

SUMMER GARDEN INSECTS

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.

Published on: December 20, 2023

SUMMER MEMORIES

Published on: November 27, 2023

AUTUMN INSPIRATION

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!

Published on: March 15, 2023

THE AMERICA ADVENTURE

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.

Published on: October 12, 2022

END OF SUMMER

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.

Published on: May 24, 2022

HERBAL BOOK

This is a small herbal book from the time long before my current concertina books. I remember writing it with a quill after I learned how to cut one. Since that time, I hardly ever wrote italic again. I realized that it wasn't my thing. Uncial, however, and capital letters, feel much better to me. And I still had to discover the beautiful rounded shapes of Carolingian minuscule! Most of my books now are written or drawn in some kind of Carolingian script.