Have you always been drawing?
No, in fact I'm not even a drawer, I'm more of a cut and paste type, a collagebeast. It's true that I was always creative. During the annual child's fair I sold home-made pins with cartoon figures that I had traced (which to my surprise no one wanted to buy).
When did you realize that you wanted to become an illustrator?
Actually I never really did know, it just sort of happened. After I had finished my last course I thought that I was finally going to earn lots of money in the advertising world. In the end, when a nice job passed me by I decided to start for myself. There were more positive reactions to my free work (collages) than to my concepts (beautiful and personal but less commercial). In that way I got more and more illustration work in my portfolio. Gradually I started focussing more on the illustration commissions than on the advertising agencies. That's how it went.
Have you studied formally? What?
I went to the HTS where I did a course on architecture. After that I did two years at what is now called the Design Academy, because I wanted to design things that I could also make myself. After a short career as a web designer I got RSI and that led to a short post-college course at the academy for applied art. A wonderful course during which you learn how to make great concepts.
Who are your clients and how did they find you?
That depends on the potential client: either I try to make an appointment with the appropriate person in order to show him/her my portfolio, or I ask that person to take a look at my website. I always make a follow-up phone call. In addition I make portfolio booklets that I send to various potential clients who are indeed interested in my work. And of course I have regular shows of my free work and sometimes also of my illustrations. In all three cases I always get reactions that lead to new commissions. I work for the Ode magazine, the youth section of the Brabants Daily, for Zwijssen and for Okki. Also I get commissions via various clients of design and communication bureaus.
How do you start a job and where do you seek inspiration?
I always make small sketches first in order to make the concept very clear. That is done quite quickly, unless I can't get it clear. Then I start cutting and pasting. That takes longer, because it takes time to match up colours, materials and proportions. I'm inspired by practically everything but most of all by nature. In nature I see so many great forms, colours and textures that I get all sorts of ideas. And I use these elemements in my collages.
In what media do you prefer to work?
Paper! A great big heap of very beautiful paper! Paper with great colours, paper with great texture, scanned and printed by me, newspaper, wrapping paper etc.
When is a drawing finished?
For me a collage is finished when all the colours and the proportions are just right. When there is no more 'noise' caused by unnecessary elements. When everything is absolutely clear.And in my free work every piece has to tell it's own story.
What work have you been most satisfied with?
I think I am most pleased with one of my free art pieces 'Angel' Even though there are things in it that I would do differently now, it was created out of a sort of freedom and happenstance that I would like to see in my other work.
What kind of project would you still like to tackle?
I would really like to make a sort of book with free work in it combined with text, for example, poems. Sort of a 'look-book', in which everyone can create his/her own story. I don't really know yet, but that doesn't matter, it's simmering in the background and it'll come out sometime.
1] Chris ware: beautiful use of colour, melancholy and the gift to tell whole stories with few words
2] Karl Blossfeldt: photographer, (1865) with a recognizable fascination for nature and itís different forms
3] Katherine Streeter: poetic collages in combination with other techniques, a field which I am also discovering more and more
4] Robert Vulkers: strong concepts in clear form.
translation: Ellen van Boggelen-Heutink
