Design delightful notebooks with heat transfer vinyl ...

It was a small thought. Ages ago. "Wouldn't it be fun to make glowing mushrooms!" The short answer, it turns out, is "no". The obnoxious answer is "the journey is the goal". So i guess the truth is somewhere on the scale between yes and no. I made this There's a pandemic these days, so ...

Judge it by the cover. Of course you will. Covers are some kind of board or another. Typically chip board: gray dense cardboard. I am using MDF and plywood, and will try plexiglass, mirror, wood, veneer and whatever comes my way. Typically, boards are covered with cloth, leather, or some cloth-plastic-y combo. The entire thing ...

The inside of a book is called a book block or register. Register makes only sense if the content must be in a certain order, such as in text, images, or any content. Blank pages are… blank. A4 on tape signatures map book Bookbinders love book designers who include a tiny square on the spine ...

Paper Paper is what it is all about. Almost. Industrial, hand made, rag paper, pulp. Printed, patterned. One thing about paper: there is a direction of fiber, and this should always go along the spine. If it doesn't, things will crack. I promise. Do you have any fancy coffee table books, that creaks; where the ...

I have an apprenticeship in bookbinding. That means I dedicated three years of work and school to it, and I got a scroll-y, hopelessly large and pompous diploma, proving it. I have not worked as a bookbinder for over 20 years. For some reason, now is the time to start again. But to find the ...

This was going to be a triumphant article about a stellar idea, a struggle of problem solving, learning curves, dangerous lasers, and the final, exuberant splendid result in all its plasticky-golden glory. Yeah, well… The idea! …so the idea: to laser engrave a bunch of slices of my brain in transparent acrylic, stack them… it ...

laser engraving 3D I have mentioned elsewhere, I love laser cutters. I got to try one at uni, and to do some pretty cool things. And wanted to make more. I could have made files and ordered the pieces from professional companies, but the laser is a tool and unlike any other, and to get ...

In the chaos that is self-employed life, it's hard to find the time to do personal projects. Personal work is a great way to explore styles and hone your skills. Especially as a graphic designer, I think personal work is muy importante. But when do I do it? After about a year of not doing ...

There is a fairy tale here in Norway, called the twelve wild ducks. The story is not really important, it a fairly classic good versus evil, patience, purity and deceit. I think it is a pretty convoluted story, and I always found it dissatisfying that there is no attempt at explaining why the princes are ...

I have fallen in love with a machine. The laser cutter at the uni. Well; actually, it is what it can do, that captivates me. I am craftsperson – I have two educations in crafts. I am a potter and bookbinder. So I have a sense for materials, how they act, what you can and ...

The network II: drawing meets laser: I made a drawing I told you about n another article, the network (it does not mean anything). The department head in my research group at uni expressed an interest in doing something lage scale on a rather empty wall. A fellow student took the idea and ran with ...

I made this infographic to show the (current state of things for) human evolution. Or quite current, because there have been some new discoveries, but they are still being debated. Feel free to download, distribute and change it, but please don't crop my name off it as it took me a long time to make it! Licence ...

Doodling is a great habit to generate new ideas through keeping active. Sketches, drawings and experiments without any objective allow the mind to roam free and prompt new ideas. That's how inspiration is born. Sometimes it's hard to make time for doodling in between all the serious work for customers. That's why I created my ...

The network. The most common question I get when people see my drawings are "how long did that take you?!"  The next question is "what is it?"  Neither question being relevant or interesting. It seems a piece of work is weighted and valued by time and meaning must be figurative. I find this very odd, this need for everything to ...

A long time ago I made a geologic timeline as a (vector) brush in Illustrator, with .ai and .eps files free for anyone to use. The only thing I ask is that if you use it, let me see the result. Making the timeline was incredibly time-consuming and ludicrously fiddly. So, a while ago I got ...

Sensory homonculus: of all nonsensical stuff I have made, this sensory homonculus is up there. Stoneware clay, watercolour, acrylic paint. Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus Sensory homonculus ...

I write this blog together with Yisela (and Vincent). I have never met either, but Yisela was such a dear that I figured she deserved a gift. So in the tradition of Sofie's book and Adam's book, I made Yisela's book. But you have to be supersupernice to me to get one; well over and ...

As mentioned in a previous post, I have dragged out some old tools and materials and started gilding again. In gilders cushion my previous life as a bookbinder, I bought a very old gilder's cushion that actually sits on top of a drawer. I have not seen this anywhere else; it seems a well spent ...

This stack-exchange question inspired me to dig out old skills and tools. Untouched for years, I got out my bookbinders gilding cushion and related paraphernalia. Getting back into the fiddlyness of handling gold leaf, I have squandered a few sheets. But it is fun. One thing: you cannot be impatient handling it, breathing is forbidden, ...

Many moons ago, when a friend of mine acquired his first nephew, he wanted to give him a story. We co-wrote the story in google docs, and I was to do the illustrations. I forgot all about it, until the day before I was due to fly to the US (and the deadline for producing ...

Back in the mist of time, I did my apprenticeship in hand bookbinding. There are basically two directions; two different apprenticeships: literature binder, or ledger binder. I am a literature binder (also called publishing or library binding). But back then it was considered essential to have a broad understanding. So part of the apprenticeship was ...

Little trick in Illustrator. One group of half-transparent objects, mirrored and rotated for a twelve-fold symmetry effect. Change one object, all eleven others follow suit. Goodness ensues ...

Both my father and his father have been interested in art and decoration. Apparently, things like those are in the blood. Recently, my father passed me along scans of a book by one J.H. Boot he found in his archives, which must have belonged to my grandfather. It's a book about stylisation, the art of ...

Doodly deck of cards: Being a big fan of doodles, I got the idea some time back of making a deck of cards. The idea came when I found a few places that will print your custom deck of cards; and what is cool is that you could use it for business cards and such, ...

I bought a watercolour set to replace my measly pocket one. This one, in contrast, has 45 colours, as opposed to 12. I was never a painter, but playing is good. I have tried some "realistic" stuff that turned out far from just that. Nevermind; doodles are good too. There seems to be no doubt ...

For the geo-geeks out there, I have finished my geologic timescale brush; now better and more accurate than the previous one. Download the Illustrator file here Download .EPS file here Included is a swatch folder with all the colours as per the instructions of the International Commission on Stratigraphy: You are welcome to use this in ...

‘…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine.’ -Douglas Hofstadter ...

You can actually buy some stuff with my drawings on them. Here, some examples of the human skull drawing. Head over to my CafePress home and have a look around (considering posters. Maybe later.). glass framed tile woven pillow card pendant t-shirt magnets sigg bottle coffee mug ...

Math can be beautiful. The artist and professor George Heart Makes amazing sculptures, and he generously shares some of the templates so that the less talented of us can reproduce them. Here, I have made a model of his Frabjous in corrugated cardboard: frobjus I am a little partial to the dodocahedron, the 12-faced Platonic ...

As mentioned in the post Mechanical owls – custom drawing, I am not the most efficient at xmas presents. So this is the custom drawing my brother got, a good few weeks after christmas. It is simply called the control room, for obvious reasons. There are some personal hints to my brother, but overall, it ...

Tree of life – custom drawing: This is the third post in the series of my custom drawings. This time, it was a custom "tree of life" for my sister. She had a whole spare wall in the cabin up in the mountains... Again, as in all custom drawings I do, there are some elements ...

Three things are very difficult to draw: hands, feet and transparent plastic. Here are some sketches of hands from my Moleskines. hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands ...

Mechanical owls: I am not the quickest with xmas presents. On the other hand, people will get a custom piece of art. I have just finished this for a friend, and his general guideline was "mechanical owls". The rest is just me in free flight. mechanical owls, custom drawing It is a large-ish drawing (21x58cm), ...

No better way than to learn from the masters. These are freehand drawings after the work of Albrecht Dürer: Dürer had apparently never seen a rhinoceros, so the drawing is what he did after having the animal described ...

  There is no better way to learn, than to study what the masters studied. Even though Haeckel might have been a little too creative in some of his visual analysis, he is up there with the best of them ...

These are drawn from a book with Leonardo da Vinci's sketches; all in pencil.There is no better way than to learn from the masters.   ...

The three kingdoms, according to Linnaeus; was mineral, vegetable, animal. Throw in man-made, and you have the Natural and the Artificial worlds… ...

Drawing is a skill, art is a gift. I am no artist, but I draw, and the same rule for learning to play the piano applies: practice, practice, practice. I have briefly mentioned earlier my deep belief in doodles. I will in a later post come back to my technique and how I go about ...

A while ago, on a whim, i did some digging into my grandmothers family tree. I found more than I bargained for, as described in the post Noble genealogy. And I decided to make a family tree... A family tree of more then five generations soon gets complicated and it becomes impossible to keep track ...