10 September 2025
Pleased to announce that a few of my prints will be part of the Printing in Dutch selection in the Print International exhibition at Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham, Wales.
Also featuring works from:
The exhibition will run from November 8 till January 24, 2026.
03 September 2025
I have here 25 original prints for the first 25 visitors to the opening of my exhibition this Friday. Hope to see you there!
19 August 2025
On Friday September 5th, the exhibition Elementair opens at Ontwerpfabriekje in Hilversum.
Next to several recent bird prints, works from the new Street Spirits series will be on display as well. These prints are made with materials found on the street. Brought together in various combinations, these discarded forms are brought back to life.
You are cordially invited to attend the opening on Friday, September 5. For more information or viewings at other times, please contact us.
14 August 2025
New print! The very sophisticated Bearded Tit, the acrobat in the reeds. Its tail too long to fit in the format of the 50 birds series. So not then, but now. As you can see, Bearded Tit is a fitting name as it clearly has a moustache…
Its wing was the complex bit this time. I wanted to show those partially overlapping wingtips. Getting those right, and the colour pattern there, required quite a few studies. And so this time I ended up with twelve separate print runs.
Dimensions: 17 x 24 cm, edition: 35 prints. Price: €125,-. Order yours here.
04 June 2025
Falco Tinnunculus / Common Kestrel / Turmfalke / Faucon crécerelle
The Common Kestrel is the Dutch bird of the year 2025. It still is one of the most frequently seen birds of prey in the Netherlands. But even the kestrel is finding it increasingly difficult to survive in a depleting landscape.
The kestrel is a mouse-eater par excellence. Its hunting method is its hallmark: some ten or fifteen meters above the ground, hovering in the air (in Dutch: praying), searching for prey.
Birds of prey have been my favorite birds from childhood. That fierce, built-in scowl, the mighty bright yellow talons, that almost armor-like yellow patch around the nostril (called cera, I just looked it up). And just imagine their view on things. High in the sky, slowly circling and gliding on wings of, important fact, a certain wingspan.
And so, birds of prey in LEGO letterpress had been on the wish list for some time already. There’s an early buzzard in the 50 Birds series, a hawk, and a little owl, but the focus there was primarily on the smaller songbirds. Those were simply better suited to the small format.
As characteristic as that mid-air hovering may be, I couldn’t quite manage to depict the kestrel in that pose! The wings are at odd angles, viewed from a very foreshortened perspective, and with the less intensely colored undersides visible. Difficult.
No, much better to show it in such a way that highlights the pattern of black spots on the male’s reddish-brown back. (The female is really beautiful too!)
That motif for those black spots became a printing form that itself yielded an interesting graphic image. So I printed it several times as a standalone print.
I printed two editions:
The dimensions are 30.5 by 23 centimeters.
Price: €275. This includes the mat, but excludes the frame.
I will donate ten percent of the proceeds from selling this print to Sovon to support this important work. Read more about that here.
Want to buy one of the original prints? Contact me.
The question was how different it would be to work on a larger scale. Would that offer more freedom? Would more be possible? Would something perhaps be lost?
In the last few prints of 50 birds, I had found a way to place elements at angles other than 0, 54, or 90 degrees. These extra possibilities quickly proved useful in designing the hobby and kestrel. They have larger wings that end at a pointy slant. The tail also needed to be angled differently for a balanced pose.
The larger dimensions, combined with those unusual angles, made the design process considerably more complex. Finding the right shapes and fine-tuning their proportions required numerous test prints. Even those initial test prints for the overall shape quickly required multiple printing plates, precisely because of those unusually angled elements in the types. Because, as always, where the shapes overlap, they can’t be printed simultaneously.
Bigger sizes also offer more room for detail. But those spaces weren’t necessarily easy to fill. I suddenly needed one and a half thicknesses, or circles in an intermediate size that wasn’t available.
The way I could stylize the designs in 50 Birds didn’t transfer directly to this larger format. Clearly, a matter of working at a different resolution.
2025-10-30: There’s an extended version of this post on the People of Print blog.
08 May 2025
Five things for this week:
A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions, video tutorials and printable folding plans.
I find this a spectacularly cool, modern use of initials and blackletter. It’s on show in this exhibition at the Letterform Archive.
The largest bible page was printed in Mainz, Germany the other day. Video
Also in German: well produced and researched radio documentaries, each around three hours long at Lange Nacht.
This book on birds in art and illustration looks quite nice :-)
Enjoy!
Groetjes,
Roy
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06 May 2025
The first of three sessions in the printmaking studion, starting with experiments in monoprint.
From subtly shaded landscapes to whirls of string and studies in complex patterns. As always, the personality of the maker seems to find its way into the work.
The assignment is to make twenty prints each. That seems like a lot in the beginning but usually everybody easily hits that target. It helps that I don’t allow prints to be thrown away.
Two reasons: 1) you don’t decide in the moment of making. 2) even the crappiest piece can be used as a starting point for next weeks session. Which is all about letterpress with wood type.
Want to try as well? Join the Print & Play sessions at Grafisch Atelier Hilversum.
04 May 2025
When you share, with whom are you sharing? With the others in your (social) network, sure. But with the owner of the platform on which you share your work as well.
Change share into publish and content into work: don’t share content but publish your work.
Yes, you can take it that seriously. So. Where do you publish your work?
03 May 2025
Vorige week in opwelling gekocht in de lokale boekenwinkel, vandaag begonnen te lezen: Over het verdwijnen van rituelen door Byung-Chul Han.
Ben nog onderweg, maar alleen al de notie van rituelen als symbolische technieken om thuis te raken in de tijd maken dit boekje zeer de moeite waard.
Was al weer even geleden dat ik mezelf de rust van in de stoel zitten en te lezen gunde.
Nou, bingo:
Aandacht is het natuurlijke gebed van de ziel - Malebranche
Herhaling stabiliseert en verdiept de aandacht.
Drempels transformeren. Aan gene zijde is het andere, het vreemde. Zonder de fantasie en betovering van de drempel bestaat alleen de hel van het gelijke.
Prettig weekend!
02 May 2025
Volgend weekend, 10 & 11 mei is het Waddenvogelfestival in De Cocksdorp op Texel. Er is dan van alles te doen over en met de vogels van de Wadden. Dit keer met extra speciale aandacht voor de duinen als kwetsbaar leefgebied. Daarom de Tapuit als mascotte dit jaar.
Ik sta dat weekend met een stand op de BirdFair en neem een aantal vogelprenten, boeken en ansichtkaarten mee natuurlijk.
Er is ook een loterij voor het goede doel (die duinvogels dus), en daar zijn heel toffe prijzen te winnen. Daarvoor heb ik een pakket samengesteld met het Print & Play boek, de zine Van de kneu en de drieteenstrandloper, een set van 12 ansichtkaarten en nog wat extra dingetjes.
Zaterdag om 11 uur vertel ik over het 50 vogels project met een presentatie in de grote tent op het Waterplein.
Dus. Voor wie zal ik alvast een prent van de Tapuit meenemen? 10% van de opbrengst uit verkoop dat weekend doneer ik aan het goede doel van het festival.
Tot daar!