As a little girl, I loved nothing more than drawing. My mother always had her bag full of papers and pens, knowing she could keep us busy wherever we went. We didn’t have mobile phones or iPads yet. When the teacher asked me what I wanted to be, I said mum, singer and cartoonist.  Mum has a lovely daughter, a singer…I won’t do that to you ;-). And the cartoonist became an artist.

Until I was 18, I still drew regularly, but after that I didn’t really do anything anymore. I went to the higher hotel school in Leeuwarden, did an internship in Boston (USA). After that, I started working in the hotel business, in commerce and for various banks. But I never quite found my niche, where I could do justice to myself. People so often said, you are creative, do something with it. Until I re-discovered drawing in a business drawing workshop in 2015. By now I was working as a contract manager at ING. A light went on somewhere, I woke up. This was where I could put both my analytical skills and my creativity to work. I applied for an internal call for illustrators for a department that wanted illustrations to support articles about the reorganisation they had just been through.  Shortly after, I was asked to join the Visual Thinking Guild within ING and we drew together for the internal client.

I left ING in January 2017 and Just Julie was born on 1 February 2017. My mission: I help people translate – what they say or think – into images. I simplify things so that everyone understands. Clear. Attractive. Better to remember. That makes you happy, and me too!