Joost Elffers is a book designer who also makes ink drawings of ethereal, bulbous beings with enormous glassy eyes. He draws them with fine-tip Sakura Pigma Micron pens on handmade paper, and each drawing begins with a curved line that coalesces into a sphere. The drawings emerged from pandemic loneliness and alienation.
Elffers lets each drawing develop through the spiraling energy of his gestures, a variation on automatic drawing. The results include dozens of studies of beings with different flippers, tails and heads, as well as teardrop-shaped whales. He first exhibited the drawings in “Joost Elffers: Off Planet Perspective” at the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam, from 30 October to 28 December 2025. The show placed them alongside objects and illustrated books from the Embassy's library, including thirteen prints of illustrations from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617).
