Mathijs Stegink

Tag: Creativity

  • Be your own dog — Visual thinking workshop

    Be your own dog — Visual thinking workshop

    This workshop is a playful, multi‑year experiment that I am doing with many groups of people. Participants draw dogs from memory, observation, and imagination to discover and learn about how our minds store and compress visual ideas. By doing experiments and comparing them we explore drawing as a language and a tool for creative thinking. Continuously uncovering our hidden patterns.

    No drawing skill is needed for this workshop 🙂, this is about exploration, not perfection. It shows how creativity emerges when habitual patterns are broken and imagination takes the lead, connecting object, eye, hand, and mind in a direct, embodied way.

    For artists, students, educators, and curious minds who want to rethink representation, push creative boundaries, and play with visual thinking.


    You can book this as a fun and interactive starter for your creative team meetings! And in the process you help me gather more dog-drawings that I will finally use in an exhibition! The workshop works well as an interactive presentation of about 45 minutes.

    contact me if you are interested! mathijs@cardboarders.com

  • Educator at WDKA and other art education institutes

    Educator at WDKA and other art education institutes

    Willem de Kooning Academy (BA), Rotterdam – since 2015 – teacher and curriculum developer in the departments of Animation, Illustration, Audio Visual Design, and Social Practice, focusing on participatory projects, storytelling, co-creation, and reflective design.

    Previously, I worked at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (departments Animation & Illustration) teaching experimental stop-motion, material exploration, with non-human storytelling as the core. I also have several years of experience in MBO Media and Design Schools and various Media Labs (2002-2015).

    Making an Encyclopedia about Kralingen Oost with the illustration students: 2024. Binding phase 🙂 Photo by Kim Hospers

  • Teambuilding events (cardboarders / animation)

    Teambuilding events (cardboarders / animation)

    Custom teambuilding sessions for Tony’s Chocolonely, Oxfam, Raets, Ziggo, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Beeld en Geluid, Atlassian, Lipton, Jaarbeurs Utrecht, and many others.

  • Doodles

    Doodles

    I teach in the illustration major at WDKA, and yet I rarely find time to draw myself. What I manage to do are doodles during meetings. They become pretty intricate (the meetings can be quite long). Doodling resonates with me because I see the world as a vast compost heap: everything decays, everything transforms. We are all biodegradable, always in the process of returning to dust. Doodling is a similar organic process and it shows that in an interesting way.

    From these scribbles, creatures emerge, cyborg-like insects, alien underwater beings, objects that fuse with humans. Everything is blending, dissolving, recombining.

    It is organic growth. What is intersting is that the fable of the grasshopper and the ant is often present: the ant stores, stacks, and plans; the grasshopper sings, dreams, and dances. I have always thought myself as the grasshopper: distracted, imaginative, irresponsibly alive while the world moves on without me.

    But I also have changed, I am now a anthopper or a grassant. I am not one or the other. I am a verb, a process, continuous shifting between ant and grasshopper.

    I used to think of death as becoming compost, but you never “become” compost, I already am :-). Always in motion, always growing, always dissolving.

    Since there is no end goal to it, doodling is a reflection of this impermanence, the constant blend between creation and decay. Many doodles are not documented here, because they were on paper and discarded!

  • I LOST MY MARBLES

    I LOST MY MARBLES

    I often drift into fixations with round things. Anything spherical is fascinating to me. Marbles, especially have been in my dreams since I was a child. They’re like small cosmoses, swirling storms, contained galaxies, little worlds you can turn and roll.


    They invite play, but also contemplation.

    Maybe that’s why I like them. They roll.

    I made these pictures with the use of focus stacking so they were very sharp. Then the harddisk with the original was corrupted. No hires versions anymore, all we are is dust in the wind 🙂