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.

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." 
​

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 simple pencil drawing can be so satisfying. Slowly and carefully drawing, focusing on the area just below the pencil, observing every detail of the subject. I try to draw every day. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist is the architect of the notion of  FLOW, which is “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” And an old Chinese saying, quoted by David Hockney, says: “Drawing needs three things, the heart, the hand and the eye, two won’t do.” 

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.