Already in my first book “The Sleepy Owl”, you can recognize my preference for abstraction, by dropping the irrelevant and keeping to the basic form of the character. This is probably a souvenir from my time as a graphic designer, when I had to convey a message to the public in the clearest way possible. The draft above shows the advantages of abstraction. The simp-ler I draw an animal, the easier it is to show motion sequences. Complicated perspective views become unnecessary. So it’s possible to illustrate a simple action, like opening and closing the eyes much more concise. In a figure rich in details such details would hardly be noticed. This kind of reflection led me to illustrate the backgrounds in a very simple way. I have to say that I enjoy checking out new techniques and picture languages. So I work, not only with watercolor, but with acrylic, collages, pastel-crayons, toothbrush-brush-technique or hard outlines with pencil, Chinese ink and others. This search for new techniques and stylistic devices led me to the holographic foil stamping technique (which became famous in my “Rainbow Fish” series), to the concept with the separated pages in “Milo and the Magical Stones” and the amazing folding-technique in “The Magic Book”.