Here I am sitting at my desk in search of the perfect day-job, to sustain my family, give me financial stability and enable me to keep creating new artwork. I’m not joking when I tell you it’s a proper juggle.

2020 is around the corner and 5 years ago I wanted to be a millionaire in 2020..haha! We’ll I guess I still have just over 13 months to make that happen. But on a serious note, 5 years ago I decided to get back into drawing, my lifelong passion.

I was a stay-at-home-mum for almost 4 years to take care of my son Saliou (7) en daughter Awa (5). ‘Stay at home’ sounds so easy..but I worked my butt off. In the Netherlands you can choose to not work and fully care for your kids if you are a single parent with the youngest under 5 years. So that’s what I did.

No regrets, it was needed. But what I did notice when I started an internship with Bureau Tint in September 2018, is that your brain goes kinda rusty quick!! It was a real shocker to discover that it’s just like returning to the gym after not having used it for years.

I had learned to use the Adobe Creative suite during my years at Art Academy (2003-08), but hadn’t really used it for 10 years. You can imagine how that went. LOL

My internship was brilliant and I’m eternally indebted to Laurens-Jan Pubben and Neil Tomlow (the owners) for giving me this opportunity. I was part of their communications agency for 8 months with the intention to broaden my skills in Illustrator, Indesign and Photoshop, but also to gain a better understanding of design within a professional setting. I designed logo’s, house styles, business cards, created illustrations and more. It was just a dream to be part of a young and creative team for a while and get back into the routine of working life.

Since the internship has finished I’ve been working on freelance jobs (1 a month or so) and I’ll be sharing more about this in a separate post.

Stay tuned and you’ll hear from me again soon.

Isabella