After graduating from the university, Mollie Faustman began studying chemistry at Stockholm University. The realization that it was an artist that she really wanted to be, however, caused her to interrupt these studies, even though her parents opposed her artistic ambitions. Instead, she started working in an office, while at the same time writing short stories under a pseudonym in the illustrated weekly magazine "Hvar 8 dag", in order to create financial conditions for the looming art studies.

In the fall of 1905, she was able to begin her artistic educational journey at Valand in Gothenburg. There, she had Carl Wilhelmson as a teacher. Wilhelmson, unlike most other teachers in the art institutions at this time, showed an encouraging attitude towards female students and his importance to their development is attested.

Even though the years with Carl Wilhelmson in Valand were very rewarding, Mollie Faustman had a strong longing to settle outside the country's borders. In the summer of 1908, she managed to get an assignment as a cartoonist at the Olympic Games in London, and in the autumn of the same year she was finally able to go to the epicenter of art, Paris, where she - with short breaks for summer stays in Sweden - remained until 1911. What gained the greatest importance for her artistic development during the Paris years were undoubtedly the studies for Henri Matisse, which began in 1910.

Mollie Faustman herself has told about how she was able to recognize some of Matisse's basic lessons from the time with Carl Wilhelmson. In this way, she had better conditions than many of the other Swedish Matisse students to absorb the knowledge that Henri Matisse imparted. Under the influence of Matisse, her art developed towards brighter colors and greater superficiality, at the same time that she quickly oriented herself towards a way of expression that also drew material from German Expressionism.

In the same year that Mollie Faustman began studying with Henri Matisse, she debuted as a writer under her own name with "Malin's Midsummer", a picture book in which the visual language was clearly influenced by Matisse. 1910 was in many ways an eventful year for Mollie Faustman. In addition to studies for Matisse and a debut as a writer, the year also included marriages. She had met her future husband, the artist Gösta Törneqvist, at Valand and, like Mollie, he was studying in Paris at this time. The couple married during a stay in Sweden in 1910, but when Mollie returned to Paris a month after the wedding, her husband did not come with her. He had had enough of the hardships of being a poor artist in Paris and did not want to go back. You can already see a certain friction in the couple's relationship here, and the marriage was hardly a bed of roses.