In June 2017 a friend of mine brought me a handmade watercolor sketchbook from Fabriano. Italy. It looked beautiful and the surface of the paper felt great but my friend told me that he could not paint on it because it is a little bit tricky. I decided to give it a try at least but it took me more than two month until I found some time to make my first brushstrokes in the sketchbook. But then I realized pretty quick what great gift my friend had given me. He was right, to paint on this paper was different to any other paper that I had used before. My painting method was pretty wet and bold at this time but on this handmade paper I had to change it. I had to reduce everything to the minimum to get a satisfying result. After a few trials I had found a way and I fell in love with this paper since. The reduction was something that I tried to achieve for a while already and this handmade paper in a small format was a great help to make some progress in this direction. In this book I collected my favorite sketches from 2017 and 2018.