Santekraam II

In April and May, i am participating in the Santekraam II exhibition, together with my pals Matthias Giesen, Berend Vonk, Ben Vranken and Vlerk, who initiated the project. For those who do not understand Dutch: 'Santekraam' refers to saints, but it also means something like 'the whole kit and kaboodle'. (And 'Vlerk' means batwing, as well as brat). We are  showing comics, paintings, prints and various drawings about saints. The venue in Maastricht was thought of as the first in the series, but things did not work out in the fall of last year. This time, they bloody well did! In all the exhibitions I had, my work was never that well-protected. If you happen to be around, check it at Museum 'n More, Grote Gracht 74 Maastricht, Holland.

Our next stop will be in the unholy city of sin Amsterdam. To be continued in June...

From 18 January - 23 February i will be in a group exhibition in Het Hijgend Hert in Breda, Holland. The other participants are old friends: Berend Vonk, Matthias Giesen, Ben Vranken en Vlerk, who initiated the Santenkraam concept -and who did this poster design. For those who do not understand Dutch: 'Santekraam' refers to saints, but it also means something like 'the whole kit and kaboodle'. (And 'Vlerk' means batwing as well as brat). We are going to show comics, paintings, prints and various drawings about saints.

Holy Flying Piranhas

More or less an afterthought. A variation on the Saints book' back cover drawing with more Blemmyans. I tried my luck with more subdued colours than usual.

Saint Solange

From my book All Saints. It will be out soon.

Alle Heiligen - All Saints

Coming soon, in Dutch, Danish and English, my new book:

Saint Sceptica

The first page of my story about the patron saint of critical thinkers. In full colour. A black & white version of it appeared in Stripburger, last year.

Twin saints

Working again on my book about medieval saints, because it's now possible to do it in full colour. The digital revolution has not been kind in many ways, but one of the nice side-effects is that the difference in price between black & white and full colour was greatly dimished.
This is a random page from a random chapter taken from the book, a six-pager about twin saints Ada and Oda. I am not trying to forge the use of colour in manuscripts, though. (If you want perfect forgeries, Alkbazz is the man to call) The art is just inspired by that particular use of colour contrast.

Comics Sketchbooks by Steven Heller

This came in the mail:

Proud to be one of the 80 featured artists. A lot of them are from the RAW circle, which is not surprising as Art Spiegelman contributed to the selection. My fellow countryman Joost Swarte is in there, and so are my pals Jakob Klemencic and Matthias Lehmann. Joseph Lambert is one of the few younger artists, but rightfully so - he's very good!

This is one of the spreads I have in the book:

It makes sense to have picked this one from a few years ago (20 sketchbooks ago) as this is from my Troglodytes series, which I did before I turned to medieval imagery. Three tomes of Troglodytes appeared in The Netherlands, while Top Shelf Comix published one collection in the States.

Anyway, Amazon carries it of course

Saint Drausina

A short story about the patron saint against invincible enemies, Drausina.

Here Death is entering the monastary. Drausina challenges him to a game of dice.

... And she comes out of that victorious. However, she realises that pride is a big sin and she humbly retreats into the wildernis in search of a hermit's living... which she finds in the stomach of a bear... This torture is ended when Death wins the return match.

Demons vs Pigeons

Righteousness prevails in my sketchbooks.

Saint Martin

The back cover of my current sketchbook (#41), along the theme of Saint Martin leaving the city and encountering a beggar.

Saint Lydwine on the road

Saint Lydwine of Schiedam beats the path for a life as a humble hermit in the woods.

My post of two weeks ago is an excerpt from a comic for Zone 5300 magazine, which has been around since 1995. I have been involved since the start. Happy to do a cover design this time. The line art is in scraperboard, the colours were done in Photoshop and might change a little before it all goes to print.

Work In Progress

Work until death and then some more!

Doing a comic strip for the autumn issue of the Slovenian magazine Stripburger. Theme: work, rabot, delo, Arbeit!

I am going to add greys later. And yes, that's a tip of the hat to Hieronymus Bosch for his famous haywain.

In bed with Saint Lydwine

The Nun who cried Wolf

If a wolf sees a man before the man sees the wolf, the man will lose his voice. If the man sees the wolf first, the wolf can no longer be fierce. If a man loses his voice because the wolf saw him first, he should take off all his clothes and bang two rocks together, which will keep the wolf from attacking.

Fish dish

This is part of a series of design for plates for the same restaurant as where I am planning a mural. This one should be seen as a print for an oval dish.

I had been thinking of doing a story based on Saint Jacob who went as far as preaching to the fishes, who naturally flocked together to listen of course. That is how it goes. Not so sure whether I am going to use that one for my book of saints' lives. It might be just this picture.

Rich Hours

Dinnertime! A sketch for a mural in a rather alternative eatery, which I will be doing next month. Not such a large one though, about 3,5 meters wide. But it will be fun to do. Updates will follow.

Saint Lydwine of Schiedam

Just experimenting with 'colouring' my art with a single layer of grey. This piece is a 'medaillon'-shape introductory thing (like the elaborate initials in medieval manuscripts) to one of the saint's stories that I have been doing the last few months. For me, this is a local saint. Of course I have been spicing up the classic stories. The wolf was entirely my idea.
Anyway, I used to be quite addicted to working with zip-a-tone in the analogue era as I would have liked to have my stuff published in full colour, but could not. Too damn expensive. So that became an alternative to colour. Now anything is possible, but I'd like to try a minimal approach for clarity's sake.

Anyone for chess?

Working on the colours of a saint's story of eight pages. Here, Saint Teresa is bravely challenging five enemies of the faith for a game of chess: the wild man, the monkey, death, the devil and the Blemmyean. There will be captions (in Dutch, which hardly anyone on the planet could understand anyway) in the two top corners.

Going totally Medieval

My friend Romuald Sourisse made this "medieval forgery" from the drawing I posted here on 20-01-2011 (Click the "Panotti" tag to see). You can see that he uses natural pigments on parchment, just like they did in the Middle Ages. I am really excited about the results and will return later this year to the insanely pictoresque town of Forcalquier to do more collaborations and learn about working with this type of material. After visiting his workplace, I can tell that Romuald is quite an expert.
Note: parchment is not paper. It is made from animal skin, often a sheep or goat.