About my oldest client, Lake
New coloring book coming up!
Hi everyone! Today I’d like to tell you a bit about my ‘oldest’ client, Lake. I work with these lovely people since 2019! Sounds like yesterday, but writing this now I realise this is actually 7 years ago. Crazy!
In one of my previous posts I mentioned that when I started freelancing, I emailed clients like crazy to get projects. This was the time I found Lake, through Instagram. They are a coloring app for adults, using work by many independent artists. They actually won an Apple Design Award back in 2017! Naturally I wanted to work with them, so I wrote them an email and they offered me a chance to create 12 illustrations.
My first book was launched not long later, 12 ‘pages’ starring women with flowers. Looking back now, I was still searching for my personal style and I didn’t really knew my voice. It’s fun to see how my style has evolved, but I still draw lots of girls and flowers to this day! It’s definitely my comfort zone.
The fun thing with Lake, is that they will only pay you for your first book. After that, you get quarterly royalties from your work. They calculate your royalties based on how many people use your illustrations to draw with. Lake has offered me a steady, passive little income over the years, of which I’m very grateful. It's also love their transparency and their communication. They are really lovely people, who put their artists first and promote them actively on their socials.
After a while, I created a second book, this time with ‘food’ as a theme. I used personal work and traced them, or used rejected sketches I liked that focused around cooking and food. My style had evolved a bit, but wasn’t as consistent as it is now. I was trying to see what worked and what didn’t, and this resulted in a few random illustrations. Looking back, I think this is my most messy book, but I was still really grateful Lake allowed me to explore.
Fast forward in 2025, and I got an email from the team saying they were visiting Amsterdam! We met up and had a drink, seeing each other face to face for the first time in six years of emailing. It was really lovely meeting part of this team, as they are really laid-back and nice, without any ego. I love working with nice people! It makes me proud to be one of their artists.
And now, it’s 2026, and I’m working on my third book. It will be launched in March officially, but I like to give a little bit of a sneak peek.
I grew up with my mom reading me fairytales out of a thick book, illustrated by Gris di Luca. These illustrations were lavish, very colorful, and very 80s. I think the illustrations have subconsciously influenced me deeply, together with Disneyfilms from the 90s. The books however, were not rewritten like Disney often did, and were therefore a bit strange and wicked. I really loved them as a kid.
So, not a surprise that my third book will be about fairytales, and I wanted to illustrate them as lavishly as the book I read as a kid. However, I like to give them a little contemporary twist. Rapunzel in Y2k fashion, Sleeping Beauty between borzoi dogs, the Little Mermaid swimming with Japanese koi fish, etc. My main goal is to have fun with them, but I also like to challenge myself to create a book that is a bit more consistent, a bit more like a series. I like to render some of them to full-blown illustrations as well, creating work that I can add to my portfolio as well.
I also want to portray women as they are: sometimes bored, spoiled or lazy (imagine being stuck in a tower). What I really liked as a kid was that the princesses or heroines in the stories were often beautiful, but not necessarily kind or hard-working. Some were just awful and spoiled. I think moral stories like that (or those in Greek mythology, or even in the Bible) are great because we identify with characters who are more like us.
Here’s to more books for Lake in the future! Hope you like this little behind the scenes. Let me know!
Thank you for reading! See more of my work on my portfolio or Instagram, or get in touch with me.
Oh I absolutely love Lake! So happy to have found your stack