Commissioned Work
Hard//Hoofd Magazine #6 Ssst
2024I worked on a commissioned visual piece for Hardhoofd Magazine, accompanying a fictional story about a crip artist's experience at an art opening. The story, written by my friend Merel Nijhuis, draws from both my experience with chronic pain and hers with autism. I created a collage to go alongside it.
For the commissioned work I was most interested in working with a publication. Partly because I did not have any experience with this yet and partly to be able to publish the fictional story Merel and I were working on at the time. Merel and I are co-founders of collective Verbloemd - a female led art collective that focusses on experiences of ‘unseen’ disabilities. We’re currently working on a series of short stories about disabled experiences, so I thought the commissioned work was the perfect opportunity to finish and publish our first one.
Initially, I explored different publishing options, but ultimately decided to pitch the idea to Hardhoofd Magazine since this platform seemed to fit best with our proposal. Merel is also an editor there, which helped get our proposal noticed. The magazine responded enthusiastically and invited us to contribute to their online platform as well as their upcoming printed edition Ssst, set for release in March 2025.
My artwork focused on the main character’s experience of being observed in a crowded space, with an emphasis on how they are perceived by others. During the process, I received feedback from Hardhoofd’s art director, Hanneke Rozemuller, who suggested some refinements—such as adjusting the placement of certain characters for better composition and removing the mask from the main character to maintain consistency with the story’s perspective. I made these adjustments while ensuring the final image adhered to the magazine’s format requirements.
The project required around 47 hours of work, including image production, consultations, and correspondence. While the illustration fee was modest, the collaboration offered valuable insight into working with magazines - such as doing everything over email, which was new to me and took a bit of getting used to since normally I’ve met the people I work with at least once in person (which I still do prefer) and the feasibility of commissioned collage work in the future. I realized that my collage process is quite time-intensive, which sadly makes magazine illustration work financially impractical in the long run. Although I can see myself doing it in the future once in a while just for fun.
Overall, the experience was very pleasant. In the beginning I was a bit nervous to be working with a professional magazine, but the whole process went smoothly via email as well as discussing my work over coffee with Hanneke. The collaboration with Merel, working with Hardhoofd’s editorial team, and seeing my work take shape in a professional setting was exciting, as was seeing the end result :)
The project required around 47 hours of work, including image production, consultations, and correspondence. While the illustration fee was modest, the collaboration offered valuable insight into working with magazines - such as doing everything over email, which was new to me and took a bit of getting used to since normally I’ve met the people I work with at least once in person (which I still do prefer) and the feasibility of commissioned collage work in the future. I realized that my collage process is quite time-intensive, which sadly makes magazine illustration work financially impractical in the long run. Although I can see myself doing it in the future once in a while just for fun.
Overall, the experience was very pleasant. In the beginning I was a bit nervous to be working with a professional magazine, but the whole process went smoothly via email as well as discussing my work over coffee with Hanneke. The collaboration with Merel, working with Hardhoofd’s editorial team, and seeing my work take shape in a professional setting was exciting, as was seeing the end result :)