an update on work and life lately

jan/feb/march 2026

Apr 02, 2026

Hi everyone! It’s been MORE THAN A MONTH since my last post, my good intention of writing 2/3 a month has not held up well. I started this Substack to document my work better, but with so many things in life, I start enthusiastically in January and slowly lose focus by the time it’s March…

Anyway, let’s not dwell on good intentions. I love to show you what I’ve been up to the first three months of this year. Sorry for the long post: it’s been a lot! I hope you sit down with a tea or coffee :)

January

January started slow for me, I took the first week off, and in the second week there was so much snow that half the country fell silent. January often starts slow, companies have to start up properly. Luckily I get paid my yearly royalties of some shops I work together with in January, which softens the blow. I decided to just enjoy the snowy neighbourhood.

I cold emailed a lot of people I’d like to work with in 2026 and focused on personal work. I started this Substack, made a banner for it, and drew lots of ladies doing pilates for my portfolio. I’d love to do more lifestyle-inspired illustration, so I wanted to fill my portfolio with people doing everyday stuff.

In the third week, I got more assignments. I made an editorial for Aedes Magazine (soon to be revealed) and a huge new poster for the Hortus Botanicus Leiden (also still a secret).

I spent the rest of my time drawing up 12 illustrations for a new coloring book for Lake Coloring, on which I wrote more here.

February

In February, things started to take on. I got a huge project for Noordhoff Uitgevers, first part in a series for the next five years. I’m drawing the illustrations of their Spanish teaching books for high schoolers. I had a lot of fun teaching myself some Spanish words, and putting in as much polkadots as I could get away with. 17 illustrations for now, more to come!

Illustrations for the words 'music' and 'dancing'

I also got commissioned again by Farmer Gracy, for which I regularly work for since 2023. I love these projects as they usually just let me do whatever I want, as long as the work features their flowers. Drawing for them is usually a very therapeutic experience for me. I decided on drawing ranunculus this time for a postcard, but regretted it when the sketch was approved - so many petals! Next time it will be tulips again :)

This postcard will be sent out with orders as a thank you

I also created a sticker illustration for Hortus Botanicus Leiden, of a dragonfly stuck in sundew. Will post that soon too!

Next to all this, all of our free time was spent at showrooms, preparing for our renovation in April. We needed to buy tiles, a shower, a bath, a toilet, a floor, curtains… the list is still not finished! Not a lot of exciting photos of this month, most are like this:

Here we were choosing between four colours for our bathroom cabinet. It’s a tough choice, they’re all so different!

I’m absolutely in love with our bathroom tiles though!

March

In March life started to get really crazy, hence the neglect of this Substack. We needed to make 1000 choices for the upcoming renovation, and I took on every project I could get before April. This resulted in many evenings and weekends full of work and driving to various showrooms all over the country. Not a great strategy, but everything turned out to be okay!

The first crazy big project was one for Artis, the zoo in Amsterdam. A dream job really: my friend Luuk, who has an animation studio called After it Moves, was asked to create an animated campaign to celebrate their water themed year. They loved the Kidsweek project we did together in 2023, a collage style animation of which I did the design and Luuk the animation.

This is a bit different than my usual illustration work, but I have a background in animation as well and I worked as an animator for three years at a production company before becoming a freelance illustrator fulltime. I usually don’t work on animation projects anymore, but I do love these photo collage projects every now and then, as a creative excursion from my usual work. And I can’t say no to the Amsterdam zoo :)

We teamed up again and after I storyboarded the 30s film, I got access to (a part of) the photo archive of Artis and started digitally cutting hundreds of photos of elephants, giraffes, monkeys, fish and flowers in just two weeks. It was madness! Luuk very cleverly animated everything together. We both had other projects and were both in the middle of moving/renovating, so it was tense. I’m very proud we pulled it off together!

my favourite collages I made for this film

My other jobs included a few editorial jobs (that I can’t yet share) and painting an ostrich egg for Easter. I will write more in detail about that last one, it was a blast!

April is starting well with another collage animation (again with Luuk!), two book covers and finishing a wedding invite. Three weeks to go until we start demolishing our upper floor…