Have you always been drawing? Yes When did you realize that you wanted to become an illustrator? I already knew that I wanted to do something in the way of drawing when I was the fifth grade of high school. Everybody was thinking about what he/she was going to do after finishing school and I was thinking about studying physics. Changed my mind when we had to draw a self-portrait in art class (Sjaak Jansen). I enjoyed it and when my portrait was lying there among the others I realized that was my calling. I knew I wanted to be an illustrator a year after finishing the Academy of Art. I had worked as a freewheeling artist/painter for a year but that was too 'loose'. I hardly worked, I needed deadlines, that’s why I became an illustrator. Have you studied formally? What? Three years as a drawing teacher, then the College of Art in the graphic department. Who are your clients and how did they find you? I do practically everything that comes my way. I do a lot of work for magazines and advertising agencies. I get new commissions from the BNO Exhibition, the BNO book and the Dutch Illustration site. I start by making rough sketches. If I get stuck, I usually do something else and after a while I look at the sketch with a fresh mind. And thus it develops slowly but surely. A tight deadline isn't good for the inspiration, but it does give me a lot of energy to keep on working.		How do you start a job and where do you seek inspiration? I make sketches with pencil on paper (50x32,cm), then I ink it in in Freehand and I color it in in Illustrator. Recently I started working with 3-D software. That's a whole new world. When is a drawing finished? A drawing is finished when I feel it is, when everything’s in place like I want it to be, however untidy that may seem. It is exactly as untidy as I want it to be. What work have you been most satisfied with? Usually that's a piece of work that cost me a lot of trouble, that made me completely desperate. And when I finally do find a solution, then it's a drawing I can be very proud of. I make something like that about once a year. What kind of project would you still like to tackle? My twenty-fifth comic book.
		sources of inspiration: 1] Andy Warhol: his use of color and his 'just do it, everything's great' attitude. 2] Dick Bruna: I have the most affinity with him because of his sketching/correcting/sketching/correcting/correcting/sketching until it’s okay 3] Whenever I’m facing a real problem, I think: how would I solve that problem in the punk/ska era? That’s the basis from which I work: ‘fuck art, let’s dance’. 4] Terry Gilliam: zie quote