Ode to Fiep Westendorp | Draw your way through life

Draw your way through life

I asked my followers on Instagram last week: 'Guess how many illustrators you can name off the top of your head. Who thought of Fiep? 'Me!!!', 75 people voted. 'Not me!!!' voted 17 people. 347 people did not vote. With this incredibly reliable survey technique, I can say that my expectation has been confirmed. Illustrators don't often make it to BN status, but Fiep Westendorp, most of them know! And that while her name was hardly ever mentioned on book covers in the first decades of her career.

Many illustrators prefer to move a little more into the background. They make the images but rarely the noise around them. There is also a prejudice that illustrators are more the nerdy people of art school, the shy kids in their own little worlds who would rather draw than talk.

A serving profession
Fiep seemed to agree with this image of the illustrator. She was quite modest and called the profession simply a craft. The illustrator served the writer and the story. Illustrations make a story more special, but should not give anything away, Fiep thought. So she tried not to be tempted too often to draw the climax of a story, but instead the moment just before or after. I also work as an illustrator and already on my first book cover I got a spot. But sometimes the illustrator feels subordinate to the writer in the book world and also undervalued in some parts of the art world. Because illustrations are more applied and sometimes commercial, oh dear!

Also, I can tell you: you often earn about nothing as an illustrator. Much of your work is voluntary. And then there's your own sense of purpose. Because sometimes it's pretty hard to talk well to yourself: the world is ending and I'm sitting here in my studio processing feedback from a writer about the shape of the guinea pig poops. Whether the poops could be a bit more elongated? Gladly with a dot at the end. You might now be thinking why would you ever want to be an illustrator? But drawing is the most fun thing in the world and Fiep thought so too. This is the time to make some noise and put illustrators in the limelight. This is an ode to Fiep Westendorp!

Spiky Tufts of Hair
Illustrations are the first visual language you see a lot as a child. I always feel that the images you see in your childhood influence your taste and way of looking at things for the rest of your life. Generations of children grew up with Fiep Westendorp's cosy little worlds, including myself in the 1990s. My favourite drawings as a child were the ones in Pluk van de Petteflet that my parents read to me.

The drawings were some 30 years old by then, but I savoured Fiep's playful style, the humour in the poses and the surprised expressions in the faces. Of the crazy heeled shoes, the very big fat or very small cap noses and the Spiky Tufts of Hair that I wanted to stroke my fingers through. Fiep flouted the rules of perspective, but in exactly the right way. I never realised before this ode how much the seed for my style must have been planted here. 

Characters from everyday life
Marvel at everyday existence suits Fiep's work. The world, even in its simplicity, is incredibly funny and special if you look closely! In her drawings, Fiep shone light on funny details that many people simply pass by. She looked around a lot, seemed to have a photographic memory and liked to draw people. Whenever I see a funny character on the street I dredge up frames on the way on my bike until I can draw it: big hat, curly moustache, long fingers, pug. Meanwhile, it also works the other way round, with people saying to me: 'I saw someone walking, it was exactly an illustration of you!' Or: 'I feel like a little Fiep lady wearing these heeled shoes.'

Fiep's illustrations are not just embellishments, it helps us focus on funny details in life, it brings us the pleasure of recognition. One of the best things about drawing is when you manage to grasp exactly what other people are feeling. 

Grown-up drawings
People often call Fiep's style childish but she certainly drew for adults too.  In the 1970s, Fiep made a cover for a feminist book by Harriet Freezer. People complained that they didn't think the playful childlike style matched the heavy content. I find that a pity, because the distinction between serious realistic drawings for big people and playful drawings for little ones, I just don't agree!

Why do so many people stop playing drawing? Stop enjoying illustrated books once they pass the age of 12? I believe illustrations can work perfectly well to bring a little air and humour to heavy topics. That was also Fiep's strength, for example in the articles on the women's page in the Parool newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s. They made as many as 1,500 drawings to accompany the social articles about, for example, income differences between men and women, or the panic about the shortage of men to marry.

Beware of vipers!
Fiep and I lived twelve years at a time. Her career took place in a different time. Practising the illustration profession was extra special as a woman at the time. She was the only woman to take the bus to the academy in the 1930s. Her Christian parents had to gulp a little when they found out that she would model naked bodies there. After graduating, she ended up in the world of advertising and there, too, there were few women to be seen. Fiep did not marry and worked hard to make ends meet as a woman alone in those days.  My grandmothers are about 25 years younger than Fiep. They married at a young age and had children early. They enjoyed their lives but sometimes they also regretted having a little less freedom.

I am reminded of a text by Harriët Freezer, in which Fiep drew a picture in the Parool:

Girls, you can make a lot of plans now, but watch out! There's a

catch under the grass: the man! Ninety per cent of women are married

before they can say porridge, let alone cook, so keep that in mind.

Make sure you make something of it before you work on your outfits. Use your freedom

as long as you have it. Travel, read, learn, work and look around while you still have loose

around. You will only get that freedom back when you are widowed, and that dear girls, may take a very long time!

Drawing all day
Several books write about Fiep that she wouldn't give up the illustration profession for any man. And I could happily repeat that now in this ode, but of course I actually have no idea what this was really like for her. I am very curious though! What I do dare say with abandon is that drawing was her reason for existence. She loved to sit in her little attic room (which she called her little sky) and paint. I recognise that. Even when bad things happen to me, I have faith that I can draw myself a way through life.  Whatever happens: it will be all right as long as I can draw!

I read that Fiep had thought it would be nice to have children but that it didn't happen. I also often think about my desire to have children: becoming a mother in the next few years also seems incredibly special to me. But somewhere it gnaws at me: I enjoy drawing so much that I prefer to do it all day every day, even on holidays, weekends and sometimes at night. Sometimes I wonder: do I want to give up that time?

I would love to have a cup of coffee with Fiep and ask how she looks back on her life in this regard. What this was like as a thirty-something and how her attitude to the profession developed as she got older. And what exactly was it like with those men? Did she still have a sense of life when she could no longer draw due to old age? I heard a connoisseur say on the radio: Fiep's drawings were her children! While I think, her drawings were just her drawings! And even if you don't have children, that in itself is incredibly important and valuable.

Free birds
Fiep drew a lot of birds in her life. Essayist Kees Fens thought Fiep's people had the sweetest bird heads. With noses like beaks poking happily into the air. I read that Fiep used birds to fill empty spaces. She would then put her hand on a spot and say, 'See so it wasn't right, there had to be exactly this bird!'

Birds stand for going wherever you want. A freedom I think she often felt when she was drawing. Because that's exactly what I like about drawing: you can make your own little world, exactly the way you want it. Your paper is blank and you can make up whatever you want on it.