Miffy has changed quite a lot since the early books, although I never realised it at the time.

I have been drawing all my life.

I come from a family of business people, but I had the idea I wanted to become an artist.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.

Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.