The technique behind Joris Maes's work

Every technical choice in Joris Maes's studio is deliberate, from the support a piece is built on to how a finished work is priced and released. "Late Harvest" (2025) is a useful case study: One session, outdoors, finished before the light went. Nothing was touched afterwards in the studio.

The technical choices behind the work

Woodblock printmaking survives a genuinely different economics than digital editions: every impression is a physical act requiring the printmaker's hand, which caps how large a run can realistically be and is exactly what gives small hand-pulled editions their particular value.

Watercolor's transparency comes from pigment sitting on top of paper rather than being bound into a thick paint film, which is exactly why watercolor demands UV-protective glazing that oil and acrylic can often do without.

Why it matters to a collector

Building a collector base is less about reach and more about retention — a handful of collectors who buy again, follow a body of work across years, and refer other buyers usually matter more to a sustainable practice than a much larger one-time audience.

Licensing a digital file for commercial use is a genuinely different income stream from selling an original, with its own pricing logic — a licence fee reflects usage rights and duration, not the object itself, because there often isn't a physical object at all.

"Late Harvest" remains one of the clearer entry points into Joris Maes's work on Bello — One session, outdoors, finished before the light went. Nothing was touched afterwards in the studio.