Chinwags
Storysharing & Entertainment
Barbara Denef
I am an aspiring illustrator born in Belgium, but currently living in India. I studied psychology at the university of Louvain and specialised in child psychology. I have worked 10 years in the Netherlands and 1 year in Belgium, mainly focused on families of children in the primary years age group.
In 2011 I followed my husband to India, where he was offered a job. We live here with our 2 sons and we've never regretted taking the step to jump into this big and sometimes challenging adventure!
Since living in India I've found the time to pick up an all time favourite hobby of mine: drawing and painting. More and more I got attracted to all those beautiful picturebooks I was reading to my kids. I sometimes even got stuck during reading, exploring the illustrations to check how this illustrator came to this nice piece of art. My kids sometimes needed to push me to continue reading :)
That's how I started to focus more on illustrating for children.
My background as a child psychologist, my fascination for the magical world of children and my passion for art gives me a perfect mix to get inspired on how to illustrate for children.
I did illustrations on birthday crowns for kids, some party invitatations, children's room paintings and birthday cards. I also participated in a contest for aspiring illustrators where I got selected to illustrate one of the chapters of a children's city guide of Antwerp, Belgium. The guide ('Is de koekenstad lekker?') is published by Garant. This is how Inge discovered me and contacted me to work out some illustrations for Chinwags.
I try to continue developing my skills by following online courses and workshops. There is so much more to learn and discover, but most of all for me it's a joy to draw and paint! Colors make me happy and I try to pass that joy to the people looking at my illustatrations.
You can also find me on facebook by following this link