Jasmine Carder will take you on an exploration through our backlist during her internship in a new series: Moments, which will also be shared on our Instagram @japsambooks. Below you can read her third entry, a moment in The Joy of Daily Drawing by Bob Custers.

07|03|2025

Hi everyone,

I hope you’ve all had a nice week in the sun.

This Friday, I want to look at some moments from the book The Joy of Daily Drawing by Dutch architect Bob Custers. The book is a catalogue of over 600 drawings spanning 50 years—the first dates back to when he was just 3 years old, and the last to when he was 53.

There is very little text in the book, aside from a short interview at the beginning where Custers describes drawing as a magical creative force that

“equals integrated looking, thinking, moving, and feeling at the same time.”

As a lover of literature, words are usually my primary way of connecting with others. However, despite the lack of text, this book struck me in a very intimate way.

Let me explain.

Although I love reading and creative writing, I’ve never kept a diary or journal. Instead, my sketchbooks have always been my substitute. They’re filled with everything from doodles of my dad’s pots to portraits of friends and lovers, to pages of weird patterns repeated over and over.

I treat these sketches the way my friends treat their diaries: private spaces filled with the tiny details that make up who I am. I would want to crawl into a hole if anyone besides me had unsupervised access to them—yet that’s exactly what Custers has given us.

In essence, he has let us into his world—the colors he wishes he could bathe in, what he finds funny, what he notices in a city, how he practices, how he sees himself, how he moves his hand when he craves movement, and all the things he creates for himself alone.

These drawings are deeply revealing of how a person sees and inhabits their world. To publish something like this is to be exposed, and it’s a rare and special thing to witness someone so utterly exposed.

Until next week,
Jasmine

The Joy of Daily Drawing by Bob Custers is designed by Studio Renate Boere and was released in 2022.

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