I case you’re wondering if I found myself a new guy, it’s the same one just different hair. Today twenty-two years married to this man!

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With love,

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Over the last month, I’ve been migrating my workspace. My new studio is a fifteen minute walk from my house, so after I trucked the furniture over, I’ve been bringing all else one handful at at time.

My new space is in an old paint factory that’s been divided into temporary studio spaces for people who work on art and/or sustainability. As you can see, it’s kind of rough. I don’t mind the concrete floor and wood panel walls at all.

The ceiling is hideous, but who’s looking up when you have such a beautiful thrifted rug?

It’s nice to have a space for myself, that I can decorate anyway I want to, but on the other hand, I want to be careful not to fill it with too much crap that I don’t need and will only distract me from my work. I also don’t want to buy anything new unless I absolutely have to. I bought a new coffee machine (had to!) and extension cord, but everything else was bought second hand or brought from my home.

I’m most proud of the couch that I found for free and re-upholstered, also in slow motion, bringing the new pillow cases one at a time seemed easier than hauling my sewing machine to the studio.

I brought all my small cactus plants…

They now live next to my books.

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One thing I’m debating is whether to bring Lorax - one of my curb side finds.

Lorax has been quite happily hanging oug in our living room, but I think would fit nicely in my studio. Fifteen minutes with a giant potted place is quite the stroll though… What would you do?

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With love,

I’ve been awfully quiet lately. Well, not really when you were anywhere close to me.

Here in my newsletter, I haven’t shared anything for a while because my calendar was packed. Not just drumming though! Here’s some stuff I made.

The woman is saying: ‘Our backyard is fun for us and the animals’. The bubbles are pointing out the things you can add to your yard to make it more biodiverse.

This is a typical Dutch backyard in size and shape, but a lot of people fill it with mostly tiles or maybe some grass. Now some fantastic people in my hometown are organizing to inspire people to put more plants in, along with feeding and shelter places for insects and small animals. There are a ton of benefits to this as I’ve pointed out in my book ‘The flying climate activist’, so I was very happy to contribute with this drawing.

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There’s another group in my town working on mobile gardens the size of a parking spot. This way, neighborhoods can try if they could offer up a parking space for a small garden. I absolutely love this idea and I think it could work really well combined with car sharing initiatives. So I made a cartoon about that.

For the Climate Centre, I made a bunch of Alpaca themed illustrations that are going to be part of a facilitation game. Here are some of my favorites.

And then of course there’s the book I’m working on, that I mentioned last time I sent out a newsletter. I’ve finished the script and make some character sketches.

You might notice that the girls’ names are flowers (Roos is Rose in Dutch). That’s because the story is about… (you guessed at this point?) three teens who turn their grey and boring street into a colorful park with the help of their neighbours.

So, lots of urban gardening themed work, I hope it brightens up your day!

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My new book is another graphic novel that I’m making with the wonderful Emma Ringelding! This time it will be for kids (age 10-12) and I will be writing the whole book and drawing half the pages while Emma draws the other half. We should have it done before the end of this year, so I really need to get a move on writing this thing. I’m therefore shifting my comic journal practice from ‘first thing’ to ‘last thing’ of the day, making it much more likely I forget entirely… One has to set priorities though!

I’ll share my journal comics when I have them, in the mean time, is there anything you’d like me to share about the process of writing a graphic novel?

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Warmly,

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Like many of us, I’ve been looking at the news and social media in horror these last two weeks, wondering what I could or should do. What’s happening in Minnesota and the threads by Trump to the rest of the world give me sense of helplessness. When I feel helpless, I reach for my phone, which makes me feel even more distraught.

Then I listened to an Ezra Klein Show episode titled ‘Has Trump achieved a lot less than it seems?’ and it reminded me that what Trump wants, is to be front page news every second of every day. I don’t want to look away and I want to help where I can, but maybe the most important thing I can do right now is to refuse to let Trump be what I read about when I wake up, how I feel when I bring my son to school and to what extend I’m able to do my work.

All of this to say, if you see me post about silly things, it’s not that I don’t care or don’t know about what’s happening. I do and I’m so deeply grateful for everyone who is speaking up and protesting. I hope that wherever you are, you also find a way to ground yourself and find joy, because you need and deserve that now more than ever.

posted about this and shared a video by that I found helpful too.

Spark in the Dark

I'm not OK.

A cartoon…

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5 months ago · 55 likes · 50 comments

With love,

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The snow is gone and my hat now fits.

As for the glasses, I went to several opticians and haven’t found a solution other than: get a pair of cheap glasses and accept they’re either sitting on your forehead or half way down the nose. I’m open to any ideas!

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After two dreadful bike rides, I decided that I’ll stick to walking for now. It takes me over an hour to bring my son to school, but it’s not all bad…

It’s actually nice to start the day off with a good long walk. Maybe I’ll keep it!

How has your start of the new year been so far?

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All the best,

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I’ve had an eventful few weeks and I didn’t know how to write about it until my son asked me to make a comic about his gingerbread house. It occurred to me that a lot of the events were tied to that piece of edible disappointment: my daughter finding a place to live, my older son staying home alone and taking care of himself for two nights while Peter and I were on a trip to Berlin… I actually went twice in the last month, once for Radiohead, once for work. I was at the Global Dialogue Platform, an event about anticipatory action in humanitarian aid, making cartoons and encouraging participants at the event to create art as well. I was working with three other cartoonists to create a structure of artworks for the closing of the event.

Here’s us, from left to right: Sayanti works for the Climate Centre and was interviewing us about the project. Then Me, Ham, Eugenia and Pat.

And this is the structure we made out of cardboard with artworks of both participants and ourselves. Thanks to Pat and his degree in aerospace engineering, it turned out quite sturdy.

So, about that: was I wrong thinking we could leave that gingerbread house on display until Christmas and then eat it? I thought that’s the way you’re supposed to do it, but the cookies became soggy within just three days. It was our first time making one and I wonder if we did something wrong.

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Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. I wish you a very happy holidays and that you feel loved and supported throughout 2026.

What does the heart say? Sneez? Sheez? So many questions…

With love,

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These three comics have nothing to do with each other other than, I made them all last week. One thing I’ve had to promise myself to get myself drawing, was that I would just work with whatever half baked idea came up. The banana cartoon is an example of that. I’m not thrilled about the comic itself, but it’s an idea I find interesting and I might want to explore further. That, in my opinion, is the whole point of keeping a sketchbook. I’m curious, do you keep a sketchbook or other form of (daily) art practice? What motivates you to make art and what do you gain from it?

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With love,

Last week was St. Maarten here in the Netherlands. The kids make lanterns and take them from door to door to sing for people and get candy. I decided to have some kids over and now have a renewed appreciation for everyone who works with kids. Anyhow, I somehow managed to keep them alive and fed and they all had a lantern and fun!

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With love,

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Miraculously, this is the first time this happened since we moved here over five years ago. In our previous home, I used to do this all the time. I’m sure about this, as I’ve documented it well.

Although painful, it was much easier in a Californian bungalow with flimsy windows to break into your own house. It might explain why my brain went into burglar mode the moment the door fell shut.

Speaking of my brain…

One of the reasons I picked yoga over Pilates, is that I thought the meditative component would be good for me.

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I still have a long way to go.

With love,

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It’s not that I forgot about posting here or that nothing was happening worth cartooning about, but anytime I thought about what to post, I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t seem silly. The more time passes, the more I feel I have to share something that is either deeply hilarious or incredibly clever.

Meanwhile, I’ve been spitting out cartoon ideas during live sessions at a rate of roughly 4 per hour.

I’ve noticed this before and I keep having to remind myself: making art doesn’t happen in my head: I have to get my hands moving. Maybe something silly comes out, but it will create momentum to come up with more ideas.

This cartoon draft isn’t my favorite, but during a ninety minute session, I don’t have time to overthink and every cartoon idea leads to the next…

And so this morning, I sat down to think about what to draw. I couldn’t come up with anything and almost gave up after about ten minutes of staring at my screen. But I had been working on this post and knew that I had to just start drawing.

Pretty quickly, I realized I had already made a similar cartoon years and years ago, but I kept going.

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As an artist, I keep having to come back to this: maybe on a good day a perfect idea just shows up out of nowhere, but it’s no use sitting around to wait for it. Most of the time, the creative process needs a lot of trial and error.

I looked up the comic I made about this before. Turns out is was seven years ago! Different child, same frustration :D

Which one do you like best?

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With love,

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In other news

The promotion of my book ‘De vliegende klimaatactivist’ had a slow start, but over the last month, quite a few interviews and reviews have been published. They’re all in Dutch, I’ve compiled a list on my website.

Lately I…

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The itching was definitely the worst part, but worth it. I’m so pleased with how my tattoo turned out.

In case you feel inspired, the artist’s name is Koro and he works in Utrecht :)
Do you have any tattoos? Did you have a specific reason to get them?

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As for the radio interview, for those of you who understand Dutch, you can listen to it here:

I’m at around 59 minutes, but do listen to the whole show if you have time - it won’t be wasted.

With love,

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For those of you who don’t know, I regularly make cartoons live at events for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. They are all sorts of events and set ups; sometimes I talk to people one on one and create cartoons based on those chats, sometimes I listen in on discussions and draw about what I’m hearing.

I haven’t shared any of this work for a while, so I figured it’s about time.

The first one needs a bit of context. The event was about vector borne diseases (that spread through ticks, mosquitos and birds). We will see more of those here in Europe as temperatures are rising. This cartoon is about an app that tracks which ticks are found where. .

Which one is your favorite?

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Hi there, remember me? I’m back from a two month break and thought I’d start this with a quick recap of my summer. Here’s some things I did…

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Very little to no drawing happened over the summer. As a result, my elbow is fully healed - hurray! Completely unrelated, my right foot is now killing me - hence the fysio.

I did make a painting…

… and a bird.

How was your summer? Any new experiences you’d like to share?

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With love,

P.S. Last week, I was also interviewed on a podcast on sustainable living about my book ‘The flying climate activist’. For those who understand Dutch, it’s online now!

Luister naar Groene Mafkezen op YouTube, Spotify of Apple podcasts!

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how I felt when my book came out. You can read it here, but here’s the short version:

I’m not going to go on about this, I just want to mention it briefly to help you understand how anxiety inducing the book presentation was to me beforehand. And I’m doing that, because I don’t want you to think that ALL of this bookmaking business is just rainbows and unicorn farts. Because what comes next, is just that.

My biggest fear was to have an almost empty room, but people did show up, the space was crammed. They brought excitement about my book and I felt so supported that having to talk in front of an audience didn’t make we want to hide in the bathroom. In stead, here’s how hysterically pleased I looked:

Here’s my editor doing a talk about how our collaboration came to be and what she likes about my work. That was nice to hear!

Marieke Eyskoot was on vacation, but had send a sweet video that just about moved me to tears.

Iris Schultheiss, coordinator of the sustainability centre said something so funny it almost gave me a whiplash. (Apparently, I don’t remember this moment as it’s all just a blur.)

Daan van Alkemade talked a bit about his inspiration, the work he does and what it was like for him when I turned his story into a comic.

The only thing that didn’t work out as planned was the quiz. The second question I had come up with: ‘Is it more sustainable to do the dishes by hand or with the dishwasher?’ left us with only four contestants and after the next question all but one were out. However, we had a winner and nobody got mad and there were drinks after.

Finally, Marloes Chater send me these photos below that capture the vibe of the evening perfectly.

As an author/comic maker, it’s hard to know how people perceive your work when you rarely see your reader in person. It makes it easy for self doubt to creep in. Now I’m proud of my book and it’s thanks to these folks who showed their support during and around this event.

On that note, thanks to Arnoud van den Heuvel there’s now this a very cool video about my book.

With love,

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Last week, I shared…

Drawing daily can be quite the challenge when you’re traveling (even when you’re not). Luckily, I had my daughter with me who lend me a hand. Not only did she color this cartoon below, she also drew herself in the last panel (mostly because she was upset that I left her out).

In this one, we took turns drawing things. Can you guess which ones she drew and which are mine?

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Last week around this time I was still in Los Angeles with my daughter. It was lovely seeing the friends that made L.A. a home for me. In case you don’t know, I’ve lived there for five years with my family before we moved back to the Netherlands in 2020. I love this city more that any place in the world because of the people; it’s a wonderfully diverse, kind and welcoming community. So seeing that ICE is raiding homes, workplaces and even schools is gutting. I’m glad to see that people are standing up in protest and pray that love and kindness will prevail. That said, while of course we discussed this with friends while there, we spend most of our time thrift shopping, eating and finding affordable parking. And so that’s what I drew about.

In the next email, I will share the second half.

With love,

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I drew this a few weeks ago and today…

My book is here!

There is a hundred percent chance there is more to say about taking climate action and I think it’s slowly dawning on me that that is OK.

This book is meant to inspire and encourage people who want to do something about climate change but don’t know where to start. I’m absolutely sure I would have loved to read this when I felt that way a few years ago.

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Still it’s a strange feeling to finally have it in my hands after working on it for several years! I feel like I’m not doing this right.

I’ve been here before though, when 5500 Miles of Comics came out, I didn’t dare to look at it either. I think it took me about a year and a half before I finally picked it up, read it start to finish and thought: ‘I like what I did there’. I hope that if you’re in the Netherlands, you will read ‘De vliegende klimaatactivist’ before I do.

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With love,

P.S. I just got back from a trip to Los Angeles, that’s why I didn’t share anything over the last two weeks. Will share some comics I made during the trip in my next email.

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When I create these emails, I like to stick to a theme of sorts. As a result, some comics are put on a pile ‘for later’ and then I forget about them. I decided to go through my archive and see what’s there. Hope you enjoy!

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With love,

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