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Back in 2000 I designed this poetic text for a headstone. At the time I just started drawing Roman capitals. Looking back now, I'm not too disappointed but spacing between letters and words could be a lot better. I don't like the ligature on the second line and the tail of the R is too weak. This design would benefit to be improved :) The text is from a German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. Here it has been translated in Dutch, and I'll try to translate into English, as good as I can :
It is time
It was a great summer
Now put the shadow on the sundials
and let the wind float over the fields
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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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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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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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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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I'm into blue and white pottery these last few months. It's not that I go crazy over Chinese bone, but I admire those artists from the distant past who were incredibly talented and inventive and I love to immortalize their art in my sketchbook. The illustration is accompanied by an inspiring text about beauty from the book 'El Profeta' by Kahlil Gibran.
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I'm always inspired by nature, by plants and trees. And I keep coming back to the poems of Emily Dickinson because she was also a lover of nature. Sometimes when reading one of her poems, in my mind, I immediately see what the following finished page in my sketchbook will look like. This illustration was done in one day, couldn't stop drawing. It's not always going smoothly like this though, sometimes I start a project, only terminating it after a long time.
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Twice lavender. On the right side an embroidered piece from maybe twenty years ago. I used to be an embroidery teacher and this lavender in a pot was a design I made for my students to recreate. I came across it while searching on my PC and made this drawing yesterday.
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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 realize that most of my drawings and texts are about nature, about the beauty and poetry in it, the positive vibes it gives. I feel that it's not really a free choice, more an irresistible urge and I don't want to oppose it. I do not close my eyes for all the grief and misery in the world, but I don't have the drive to focus on that, with all due respect for those artists who have the profound aspiration to do so and succeed in transmitting their beliefs. But in my work I want to show the opposite side of ugliness, negativity, misery and harshness. So here's a spread in one of my sketchbooks, filled with nature. The tree on the left side is the tree in our garden that I can see while eating in the kitchen. Especially in the morning, there are plenty of birds on the tops of the branches and it inspired me to make a drawing of it. In all honesty, I have to say that our birds are not yellow: they are sparrows, blackbirds, chews, titmice, collared doves and robins. On the right side of the page, I drew a plea to preserve and keeping survive folk art, very close to my heart! This can be in many areas such as woodworking, pottery, painting, embroidery, ironwork, furniture, silversmith's craft ... and that in all continents of the globe. I love to look at folk-art objects, generally simple in form yet amazingly beautiful! They keep inspiring me.
