From a very young age, I was always drawing, and in the nineties, I began my professional life as an illustrator. I was twenty-six, still very young. I remember it like it was yesterday — walking into the offices of Reklamestudio Kees Kuiphof in Ede with my portfolio, ready to present the kind of work I was creating. I lived in Veenendaal at the time and had to take the bus for about half an hour. That meeting turned into a long and enjoyable collaboration with Kees.
Three years later, I had my driver’s license, which made visiting clients after acquisition much easier — and allowed me to approach clients farther away. Driving an hour to visit a well-known magazine publisher in Hoofddorp was no problem at all.
In those early days, the internet as we know it today didn’t exist yet, nor did mobile phones with built-in cameras. Back then, I had only a few ways to collect reference material to make illustrating easier:
- The client provided reference material — for example, a few pictures of the subject to be illustrated.
- I took photos of the subject with a Polaroid camera.
- I made sure I had the subject right in front of me and drew it on the spot.
Once, I sat in front of a pastry that I had to draw — and, of course, I happily ate it afterward. Many times, I worked with flowers for greeting card illustrations. It truly was (and still is) such a fun profession, being an illustrator! 😄
Now, many years later, in a time when everything moves incredibly fast and technology takes much of the work out of our hands — not always to everyone’s liking — I find myself increasingly drawn to creating artisanal, refined botanical drawings and paintings, always striving for more precision. Even finer veins in a leaf. As a child, I was already pursuing that kind of refinement — and I still am. Or perhaps, once again…