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Nice memories of a memorable trip in the south of France and experiencing a lunar eclipse! My travel journal is gradually getting filled with amazing adventures all over the world.
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Here are some beautiful calligraphy pieces by my late father Jef Boudens, dating from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Mary White (English calligrapher) wrote the following in The Newsletter of The Society of Scribes and Illuminators from 1982: "The thing that first strikes you is the incredible crispness of everything he does, whether lettering or illustration, and his superb and invigorating sense of design. One cannot generalize about his work because it is so broad in content, but he often uses variations on Gothic and Uncial forms and, of course, Humanistic Cursive, all used in an individual modern way.... There is complete harmony between the letters and any decoration he incorporates. The two together make one whole. The decoration, if simple, often has a wood-cut character."
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What to do if you are out of inspiration but you, at all cost, want to put that pen to the paper? My solution is to copy a nice black and white photo. You don't have to think a lot and meanwhile you keep busy! I first drew a grid with squares from 1 to 1 cm. I did it on the photo and on my paper. After that you can start filing in all the squares just as you see it on the photo. Here I used stippling. Stippling is a drawing technique in which areas of light and shadow are created using nothing but dots. The basic idea is simple: for darker areas, you apply a greater number of dots and keep them close together. Then for progressively lighter areas, use fewer dots and space them farther apart. Below is the picture of my mother. Underneath is my grandfather, the first portrait I made, using this technique. I realize now that the one with my grandfather was a lot easier to draw.
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Third International Calligraphy Exhibition in Bruges, 1989.
For several years, an exhibition about lettering art was set up in a beautifully restored house in a small dead-end street in Bruges, Belgium. Every three years, during summer, people could visit this internationally renowned exhibit and enjoy a magnificent setting. If I'm not mistaken, there have been 8 exhibitions in total. A select gathering of internationally renown calligraphers and letter carvers as such had never happened before.
For several years, an exhibition about lettering art was set up in a beautifully restored house in a small dead-end street in Bruges, Belgium. Every three years, during summer, people could visit this internationally renowned exhibit and enjoy a magnificent setting. If I'm not mistaken, there have been 8 exhibitions in total. A select gathering of internationally renown calligraphers and letter carvers as such had never happened before.
From left to right:
Top: Eric Marland (UK)-Oswald Schelstraete (B)-Sepp Jacob (D)-Oswald Schneider (D)-Jef Bultynck (B)-Werner Schneider (D)- Kristoffel Boudens (B)-Zhang Din (CH)
Bottom: John Skelton (UK)-Sarah More (UK)-Claude Mediavilla (F)-Els Baeckelandt (B)-Elmo Van Slingerland (NL)-Goedele Soetewey (B) - Jef Boudens (B)-Pieter Boudens (B)-Christine Wagner (D)-Joke Boudens (B)
Not in the picture: Will Carter (UK), Kevin Cribb (UK), Gerald Fleuss (UK), Gaynor Goffe (UK), Roger Gorrindo (F), Franck Jalleau (F), Jean-Claude Lamborot (F), Jean Larcher (F), Nadine Lebacq (B), John Nash (UK), Hannu Paalasma (SF),
David Parsley (UK), Tom Perkins (UK), Katharina Pieper (D), Leonid Pronenko (USSR), John Stevens (USA), François Thivolle (F), Jack Throwbridge (UK), Ernst Vollmer (D), Mary White (D)
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
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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.
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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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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.
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This pencil drawing was made by my grandfather (1894-1967). It is a portrait that he made of his sister Anna. It is the only portrait I know of, he was actually a landscape painter. But I love this drawing a lot and in real life it has that velvety texture.
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Some of my father's alphabets, as they were made ready to be printed in his first book in the 50's. He always worked on squared paper with Indian, waterproof ink and retouching with white gouache.
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I'm working on a book, inspired by the journals of my maternal grandfather. The biggest part of his diaries is about World War I, but there are also stories and anekdotes of when he was a child, getting into mischief with his friends. He grew up in a very small village in West-Flanders where his father was a forester for a castle's lord. At the age of 16, he emigrated to the USA with his parents, brother and little sister. It's been a revelation to read these two diaries and to find out how his life was. I've already made a page about his life during WWI and I hope that other pages will follow!
