15 11 2024

Koppermaandag 2025

Well that was fast. 25 people have already added their info for next years Koppermaandagprent. So, alas, but thank you for your interest!

12 11 2024

Bluethroat

The design process and the thirteen color separations to produce the Eurasian Hobby were quite time intensive. So it was quite pleasant to return to more familiar, smaller, terrain for a bit. Without the constraint of a 15✕15cm frame I could pay more attention to the exact position on the paper. Of course, most of the complexity was in all those colours around the throat and chest. Getting the length and direction of tail and feet just right took some time as well. Quite the perky stance no?

View the Bluethroat

22 10 2024

When in doubt make something

This is the somewhat smaller, but still loud and clear version of this one.

The design was created using a variety of wood type letters. The challenge was to get these words of different lengths to create a solid rectangular block of text. There are quite a few bits of paper underneath the worn down edges and serifs to get as much as possible to a printable type height.

And it really is a note-to-self. I still regularly need this reminder myself.

Dimensions: 46 ✕ 64 cm.
Edition black on white: 30
Edition blue on black: 20
Price: €55,- including shipping.

Should you need this reminder as well, let me know.

07 10 2024

Type height

height-to-paper; type height. The standard height of types, blocks or any letterpress printing material. This height is for the United Kingdom and most American countries 0.918" (23,3167 mm). In other countries height-to-paper is: France 23.56 mm, Germany 23.56 mm (Old German 24.90 mm obs., Leipsic 24.82 mm obs.), Netherlands 24,85 mm, old Flemish 24.78 mm), Austria ≈ 23.56 mm, Russia 25.10 mm and bookbinders type high 6.5 mm.
f: hauteur en papier; hauteur du caractère
d: Schrifthöhe
n: letterhoogte

13 08 2024

Nine journals and counting

So that’s nine journals filled since 2020. You can see some early enthousiasm in the number of journals per year! At the same time, still doing these four years later, so the habit sticks.

Building journals

The main success factor is making the barriers to create and fill these as low as possible:

• Standard dimensions
• Fill sections, not books
• Have a ’this always works’ format for filling a page

These journals are A5 size: 21 centimeters high, about 15 centimeters wide. I create 16-page sections by folding four A4-sized sheets once. Four sheets of A4 paper makes for a 16-page section. These sections are not bound together yet. This allows for shuffling pages around while the sections are being filled. You can see three sections lying next to the journals in the photo.

Fill eight sections and another 128 page journal is ready for binding. I select two prints on heavier paper for the back and the front, then ask Melanie to turn it all into a book.

So have low barriers to starting one, and outsource the final stage of assembling it. Having a bound journal delivered back to you is a fun and valuable gift to self.

Journal contents

A journal is a private space, a safe environment to think, explore, write and draw your mind. Mine have quick life drawings, left-over (mono-)prints, abstract doodles, writing and a lot of mind-mappy breakdowns and sketches of whatever I’m trying to figure out at that time. To-do lists not so much, those would get lost in the shuffle.

Materials used most often: fountain pen, pencil and our large collection of Posca markers.

This always works to get a page filled: Lynda Barry’s daily journal format, sometimes in my modest extension of it (a post in Dutch).

I could still do a lot better in reviewing them and pull out the interesting ideas and combine things across multiple journals. My Bildung 1 zine consists mostly of selections for the first four zines. There’s enough material to do another one like that for sure.