studiomalu

[studiomalu]

st. catharinakerk

It's my last day here in Eindhoven. I had a lovely breakfast in the hotel restaurant and still 2 hours left before I had to check out my room. So what do you do in the meantime? Yep, make a lino! The last one in my Eindhoven series.

One of the most prominent buildings of the city center of Eindhoven, is the St. Catharina cathedral. You can see the two towers sticking out from almost everywhere.

I usually need a bit more time to make a print. But I was limited in time and with some hurrying it worked out!

Here you see the cut lino blocks and the first test print on green paper.

For this print I like the white background more because it makes the colors more pop.

And the print on the right was a 'happy accident' as Bob Ross would call it. But I even like that one the best!

It's hard to read what it says, but you can still sort of read it. Love that about this print.

So, that was the last print for this adventure. I really enjoyed spending my yearly solo trip like this. And I think I will do it again next year. Even though it was a pain in the ass to travel with 2 suitcases. With one weighing 30 kilo's because of all the lino tools :' ) But I wouldn't have done it any differently.

Here all the lino blocks I have made. I wanted to do so much more. But there just wasn't more time. But I should also be proud of myself for making one print a day!

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the blob

If you've ever been to Eindhoven, you probably know this unique glass dome called 'the blob'.

The Blob is a transparent, teardrop-shaped building in the center of Eindhoven. The 1,400 m² structure, which is 25 meters tall and consists of a mix of glass and steel, is located on Emmasingel. It's facade consists of 1,500 triangular panes.

The futuristic building was designed by Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas. The client asked for a cost-effective design that would showcase the complex’s architecture to its fullest potential, but that would also be easy to construct. It took six years to develop the building.

I gave my blob different colors than the original design. Not only because the real colors don't transfer that great on paper (aka it looks boring, haha). So I gave it my favorite color combination of hot pink and burned orange.

This was number 3 of my Eindhoven citytrip art weekend. I hope I can manage to make one more print. That would mean I made a print a day during my stay!

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de lichttoren

Another day, another Eindhoven print! The famous lichttoren.

Today I worked on a second print. One of the iconic buildings of Eindhoven is the Lichttoren. It's the old building of the company Philips, that produced a lot of lightbulbs back in the day.

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van abbemuseum

I'm on my yearly citytrip at the moment and enjoying Eindhoven for a couple of days. On my citytrips I just have one must see, and that's a visit to a museum. Today I went to van Abbemuseum and of course I made a print!

I usually don't bring my lino tools and stuff on my citytrips, but this year I wanted to turn my visit into a little solo art retreat. So I brought a suitcase full of all my lino materials. And it was the best choice ever to do that!

The hotel I'm staying at has a spacious office desk I can work on. The desk is a bit higher than a normal table, so ideal for cutting.

I went to the art store yesterday and found colored paper that I wanted to try out. I couldn't choose and got all 3 colors :' )

Today I made some ink tests to see what works best with the paper. I used the green paper, but it's hard to see on the picture. I love the color!

The end result!

I brought my print to the museum of course : D

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half timbered skyscrapers

A new version of the 'vakwerkhuisjes' series I'm working on! For todays print I dreamt about cities, big cities like New York, but full of half timbered houses. Wouldn't that be fun?

You can see all prints in this series here: vakwerkhuisjes

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zaanse huisjes

It has been a very productive day in the studio today! The daughter is at a sleepover at the grandparents, so I had a full day to work. Yay! It's been long since I've had the time to do that, so I tried to take full advantage.

To stay in the theme of today - houses - I remade a print I made 10 years ago. The original print (and photo of it) got lost unfortunately. But it was a black and white print of the Inntel Hotel Zaandam. I just love the architecture and how whimsical it is! It's designed by architect Wilfried van Winden and has almost 70 traditional Zaan houses stacked on top of each other.

For this new print I used color this time. The traditional green and one blue house. I like how it turned out! And now I want to plan a holiday there! : )

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vakwerkhuis

The last week I've been working on a new series. A series I call 'heimat', which is German for home or homeland. In my heimat there's a lot of typical black and white houses that are called vakwerkhuisjes (half-timbered houses). Read on to see what I've made so far.

After carving and printing some cards, I decided I wanted to give the print a little extra. So next to a normal A6 card, I also made a shaped one. This is the first prototype to see if it works how I imagined it!

There's more to come soon!

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this was june

Every month I try to share some pictures here. Mostly of things I found pretty, beautiful, inspiring or worth remembering. Here are the pictures snapped in June 2 0 2 6.

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the russian box

One of my favorite museums in my area placed a new artwork at the entrance and it inspired me to make this new print! If you read along you can see how the print came to life.

Architect Aldo Rossi made this artwork that is (unofficially) called a 'Russian Box', because of his love for Russia. Here you can see the 3D mock up of the box. The museum says it's a tribute to Aldo Rossi.

I was directly drawn to it's shape and colors!

Here you can see the real version in action.

Making a new print means first: sketching. I wanted to use all the real colors of the artwork, so that also meant planning how to cut everything.

After cutting, you get a better idea of how the print will become.

For the background I made a Russian inspired font.

And here the end result! It took me 6 misprints to get a good one! ; )

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cool cat on the bass

Last week I worked on a birthday present for the brother in law, who turned 50 this year. Every 10 years, he celebrates his birthday together with his friends (who are also turning 50 this year). So it was going to be a big celebration!

On Saturday morning we drove to Germany, to the Sauerland region. We were invited for a day in the forest with live punk rock bands.

I knew I wanted to make onkel O. a print, but what? The invitation we got was a concert ticket. And one band playing, was the band of onkel O. himself.... So I decided there was only one option: onkel O. on his bass :D

Onkel O. turned into a cool cat on bass. With sunglasses and boots, his bass and of course an amplifier. I used bright colors on this one and kind of loved how it turned out.

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how it all started

Today I was writing up the bio page for my website and came across the very start of my printmaking journey. It all started with these portrait stamps, more than 10 years ago. So here a little throwback!

My printmaking journey began in 2015, when I started a project: a stamp a day for 365 days. That's a lot of days! So quite quickly I decided on a series: stamp portraits.

I asked everyone I knew if I could make a portrait of them. Over 60 people joined me in my portrait stamp journey. So cool!

It was a great way to practice my skills. And I learned how to make clean lines and how to capture the essence of a person into a stamp with just a few lines. Still very grateful for everyone who trusted me as a newbie! :)

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The last few days I've been working a lot on my website and portfolio. And they are finally finished!

To see my portfolio, click here. It's best viewed in presentation mode (click the 4 arrows on the top right).

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let's go swimming!

We are currently in the midst of a big heatwave here in The Netherlands. It's been around 30 degrees the last week and this week we're expecting it to go up to 37, woah!

How are you handling the heat? My body is not very good at it. Unfortunately I'm very prone to getting headaches and migraines. So I'm trying to find ways to cope. Hopefully it's just one more week until we get better temperatures.

The afternoons with the daughter mainly look like this: cooling down in our little pool in the garden. And when we can, a visit to the local outdoor pool. Keep cool everyone!

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pirate pistols

I was cleaning out my digital art drawer and came across a linocut that I never finished. It's a print of pirate pistols that I made years ago to gift our friend Lu for his birthday.

He has a pirate themed cellar with a bar, so it would fit perfectly in there. But at the time I couldn't find a good frame that fitted the old pirate look... so he never got it!

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flower girl

It's been a while since I posted here! Hi, I'm back! 👋

I had a lovely creative day yesterday that made me realize I haven't made anything in months, and that it's definitely time to pick that up again! So here we are... my latest little stamp, a flower girl.

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member of the always tired club

Remember that I hoped and wished to make 2026 a year full of art? So far it's going great!

I added a new stamp to my always tired club. They are mostly self portraits in the form of cats!

If you are also a member of the always tired club (because you have a chronic decease or are a parent that doesn't sleep that much...) and would like to have a card, write me a message! The only thing I ask in return is paying for the shipping costs.

I sign all of my work with a personal stamp. It was time for an update, so I made a new MRMR stamp.

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happy 2 0 2 6!

It hasn't been the best year for my art. I couldn't find headspace or time to make things. It's one of my intentions for 2026: make more art!

To kick of my year full of art, I made this new linocut.

The owl symbolizes deep knowledge, insight and intuition. That's what I hope the new year will bring you.