In my previous life I  was an embroiderer. I was particularly interested in folk art embroidery. Each country in the world has its own style, colors, patterns, materials ... This painting in one of my sketchbooks is inspired by some beautiful Swedish wool embroidery. I added some interesting info about this kind of needlework. For the text block I used my essential superfine pigment liner (I've used countless of them) and for the illustration I used gouache because of it's velvety effect. I notice that I'm not using watercolor a lot, only on occasional basis. 

Click here to start customizing

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.

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.

This time, no sketch in the usual black, but a nice brown color. When I was teaching in Los Angeles a few years ago, I bought a whole number of pigment liners, in a variety of colors. I never used these brown microns until now and I think they give something extra to the drawing. As you can notice, they are the very fine ones, the 0,05 series.

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!