This year our christmas card was inspired by an interior painting of a red room that I made last year during the summer. I used good old photoshop to give the room a christmas makeover. Even the old twikga christmas tree came down from the attic . I designed that tree for my very first christmas card in 2009, when I was working on my first Phanhabs book, Lush Bush. The Phanhabs Night Hide card...
Sinds een half jaar ga ik elke woensdag tekenen en schilderen bij Artiance. Déjà vu? Ja! Het herinnert mij aan de beginjaren in Hamburg en aan de Akademie. Maar sindsdien is er zo veel gebeurd. Ik heb dit verhaal door de jaren heen al zo vaak verteld. Wellicht is het tijd om het achter mij te laten. Daarom zet ik het hier nog eens online. Dan hoeft ik het zelf niet meer te vertellen. Ruim 20...
A Christmas Phanhabs inspired by our visit to several hides in Kenya. We were able to take pictures on eye-level and observe night time behaviour.
It feels good to publish something on paper again, even if these are just christmas cards. The Phantastic Habitats I used to decorate our seasons greetings were inspired by safaris to Manapools in 2022 and the Serengeti this summer. Making these new Phanhabs brings back fond memories of making the Phanhabs books. They were published by twikga Verlag in 2010 and 2013. Phanhabs stands for...
Das Thema der IFUPA 2022 war BUCH, Überarbeitungen-Memoiren-Utopien. Das twikga BUCH-abenteuer hat fast 10 Jahre gedauert. Inzwischen sind wir nach Holland zurückgezogen. Den twikga Verlag gibt es nicht mehr. Aber die Illustrationen von Tanja Dekker leben fort auf twikga.com Phanhabs Lush Bush war das erste WimmelBUCH was twikga veröffentlicht hat. Für die Postkarte habe ich es überartbeitet und...
Finally, after 5 years I have my own creative workspace again. Moving countries, building a house, getting settled took time and crowded my head. Maybe the lockdown gave me the peace of mind to unpack the boxes which were still in our cellar. I still do not have the peace of mind or inspiration to create really new things, but for now it is great to just get my fingers dirty again. It was great...
In 2016 the twikga publishing company was closed down and we thanked our fans for supporting us. In 2017 we moved from Hamburg back to Holland. In took some time to build and get settled into our new house. I used the corona lockdown to go through my archives, to evaluate where we stand and to redesign our websites. The twikga name now stands for the illustrations of Tanja Dekker and the...
The corona lockdown gave me the chance to go through my archives and look back on what I have created during the last 10 years. I realized that I have been making phantasy birds for a long time. Birds are everywhere. You see them in your backyard, they wake you on an early spring morning. That makes them easy to study. They are great to create and tell stories with. The first time I created a...
