There are artists that I like the drawings better of than the paintings. I already confessed once that I feel that way about Rembrandt, and Ingres (1780-1867) is another such artist.

His portrait drawings are an inspiration.

Such beautiful drawings! Such lively people!

I could look at these for hours.

I'm hard at work finishing a new picturebook based on an lp (!) with children's songs by Dutch band Klein Orkest, called Roltrap naar de maan (escalator to the moon)

The book will include a cd ofcourse!

Above here you see the illustration I did for a song called De step (the scooter)

The book will be published by Rubinstein publishers, Amsterdam this fall.

Kenneth Rowntree (1915-1997) was one of the British artists that lived for a time in Great Bardfield, Essex, like Bawden and Ravilious, about whom I wrote earlier.

Ofcourse, part of the atraction to his work is a kind of nostalgia, but I love his work anyway, especially things like his church interiors.

During WWII, between 1940 and 1943, Rowntree was one of the artists commisioned by the government to record England and Wales before the war would alter it for ever.

One of the art books I look at most often is Tausend Blicke, a book of child portraits by Swiss photographer Emil Brunner (1908-1995)

During the second World War, it was impossible for Brunner to work outside Switzerland.

Instead he decided to portray all the children in the Bündner Oberland district, in the remote mountain villages there.

The photo's are stunning. I saw the exhibition of them at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam in 2008, and was sold!

How beautiful they are, the portraits by Dutch photographer Marco van Duyvendijk (1974).

Strong, vulnerable people are portrayed here.

And the colours are beautiful too.

Van Duyvendijk has worked all over the world, for instance in Eastern Europe and Asia.

A postcard of the little girl Rebecca, top right, is always on the wall of my studio.

'Bring it on, world!'

The first time I was in France on holiday, I saw it mostly from the car.

Every night we drove on just a little bit too long.

We came through small villages in the twilight; here and there a light was already on.

The paintings of Henri Le Sidaner give me the exact same feeling of melancholy.

It is warm and good in these houses, and they would let you in if you knocked on the door, but you don't and it is okay.

Last wednesday Naar het noorden, the beautiful children's novel by Koos Meinderts won a 'zilveren griffel' (or silver stylus), the prestigious Dutch literary prize for children's books.

Later this year, in October, we will hear if the book will even win the 'gouden griffel'!

Ofcourse I own books by the Austrian illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger (1954)

I admire her work.

It is calm and 'clean', well composed, with beautiful colors and a nice archaic feel.

Not oldfashioned but timeless.

Although as a child I loved Asterix and Charlie Brown, nowadays I never read strip albums or graphic novels. I think it is that I can't cope with that much visual information on one page.

Therefore I only know the work of Jorge Gonzalez through internet.

But what beautiful work! I think I will have to find a copy of his 'Lord of the flies'!

We brought back a small painting by Brian Alderman from Wensleydale, Yorkshire.

It now hangs between works by Dutch painters Frank Dekkers and Rob Jacobs on our wall.

Quite a nice collection!