Hi there!

I was recently asked  to contribute to the site Fairy-Tale. I have an excellent writer at my site, so he was helping me out with the fairy-tale text:

“At the sight of the Plover, the empty-handed travelers unraveled their sorry tale. The banks were barren of blackberries, they told, the river too swift for a cranberry. Winter had borrowed the raspberries, too, and the soil the last of its strawberries. At this point their stories diverged entirely, though, for it soon became apparent that bearded fellow had napped during most of the fruit-hunting expeditions.

“Yeah so what?” he yawned. “Mr. Amulet over here’s all full of himself, anyway. Thinks he’s lucky.”

The Plover turned to the other. “Then you alone have given me the rarest and most delicate fruit of all,” he said, retrieving the golden coin. “The fruit of your labor.”
// © Conor Dillon

It is a sweet idea: the illustrator starts with a story or fairy tale and the next one will continue.

I am currently working on various projects, some of which I am very excited about. I am responsible for a new website and logo for a horse company, I am going to illustrate a children book story about monkeys…

I was added into the 3×3 Professional Show and received the book. I have been asked to contribute designs for wrapping paper, which will be sold on some bookbinding fairs.

The poster for “Batterie-Next” arrived and you can order the whole poster/catalog with a bunch of cool illustrators and photographers here!

I am happy to say that we founded a little group here in Cologne, with seven very devoted illustrators who help and share their thoughts. You can see all the contributers on this site: Illusalon

I was also experimenting with color and ink and I had troubles finding the right paper. I finally got used to the itchy feather and the ink, also the white ink from “Rohrer and Klingner” is phenomenal.

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Currently I am working on some selfpromotional stuff, which I will send out next year.
My good intentions for the year 2010 are definitely to promote myself better and last longer with that intention. The promotional card I am sending is a little folding card, which unfolds itself by revealing new insides into my neighbourhood; which is my real neighbourhood indeed.

It is still in a dummy mode. The actual card will be printed soon. The clouds on the back will be the adress and stamp field.

ALSO: I was recently featured in the fantastic magazine »STRAPAZIN«. I feel quite honored to be in it, actually.

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It happened a while ago, but I just thought I should mention that I am one of the winners (Merit-Award in Illustration – two times :) ) in the Creative Quarterly magazine.

With one of the images out of my comic-novel »Neighbourhood Conversations at Flower Beds and Fire Hydrants« and with my contribution for the Jitter-Magazine competition »Biester«.

Its the first combined professional and student show drew a wide variety of work.
All medal and merit winners will be exhibited in the next issue of Creative Quarterly coming out at in December 2009. The winners and runner-ups work will be in our Online Gallery in December 2009.

I also had to send a photo of my inspiration, which was a rather difficult task. I really couldn’t figure out, where it is coming from. So I chose an »official« one, which is a drawing of my grandpa. He was a local artist, stonemason and sculptor, and I wish he could have given me more company in my career as a so called artist.

But actually what I realized (of course after the deadline, and after sending my inspirational photo): I get tons of inspiration out of »spinning«. My god what a boring final achievement; but true.

With my pattern-designs (the astronaut and the dogs walking), I am shown in the book »Zeixs Pattern Book«.
I didn’t hear anything of them until finally they were showing the contributers in a link list on their website :/

I have also been to the Frankfurter Book Fair 2009 here in Germany. It was fun to meet a lot of very talented illustrators; but quite stressful as well. My feet hurt for an entire week.

Anyway I found a treasure on the book fair, which I would like to show you:
I start consider myself a book collector and our self-made beautiful bookshelf is already bursting.
This treasure is produced by »Officina Ludi« and the owner Dr. Klaus Lorenzen is responsible for the publishing of truly wonderful books: all letterpess printed, either in Linolcut, Woodcut or Ink with water color. Some of the most famous illustrators of Germany (Klaus Ensikat) are happily contributing to his collection. Each print is coming with a super-special edition with original drawings, leather-binding etc. It is a very passionate publisher.

The illustrator is Anne von Karstedt, Text »Wolfgang Hildesheimer: Das Ende einer Welt«:
three different layers of linol cut over ink…
The text is asking the ongoing question: Which sense does music and art make, why making beautiful books, when no readers will be there in our society to enjoy it anymore. And is it worth it, to contribute your life to art (even sacrifice it), when it is not even settled, which »value« the artwork provide, if it is authentic or artificial, and who decides about that?

I certainly did enjoy this book and especially the artwork. The illustrator is working in a museum which shows old industrial work processes – I would love to be able to use a letter press every day, and getting steadily payed for it :)

I am working on new ideas, I keep you up to date…

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I was meeting some friends and members of the IO in the “Aquazoo in Düsseldorf”; a big aquarium with lots of nice fish. I don’t fancy to draw fish, I don’t know how to define their body forms and shapes. I guess, I don’t like that they all seem so arbitrarily in their forms, that there is not a real rule attached to them.
But the structures and colors of them are so amazing. Too bad, that I just sketch in black & white :)

I am also attending a drawing class. My study at the university of Düsseldorf left lots of space for wonderful typography lessons, but not really for drawing classes: illustration was nothing more than dalmatians are for Cruella de Vil.

My new drawing class is taught by a Russian artist from the St. Petersburg art academy, which is awesome only that all of the attendees are on an extremely low skill level. Some of them are really weired:

I think that one of them spies on me :) do you remember this Eager Beavers who sat next to you spying on what you were writing, pulling back, holding their arms all over what they were writing, in case you wanted to spy on them (which they did already in first place). Well, anyway, I have an older lady, probably 50, who talks in a very precocious way, and when she sits next to me, she spies like that at my drawings: giving exaggeratedly looks, pulling back, holding her arms over her own drawings. Haha, that makes me feel quite weird.
Another woman was insisting that there was a pencil stealer in the room and that she saw that I have the same pencils than her. Funny, I don’t have these pencils. But she was telling everybody outside while smoking.
Well, as you see, I am not so well with the people there, but the teacher is fantastic. He knows what I need: perspective and anatomy. Even though I read a lot about perspective, I am so much more happy that he tells me the tricks and just force me to do perspective, which I usually avoid.
It is also a nice way to get out of my own habits of drawing in black and white and experiment again.

And here is a music-video in which I fell in love with. I want to buy a little praxinoscope and experiment with it and do animation again (its just 16 frames, perfect!)

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Hello there, well,… I think I was lucky enough to choose the wrong door again:

Mother holle led her also to the great door, but while she was standing beneath it, instead of the gold a big kettleful of pitch was emptied over her.

My webhost went bankrupt and shut all its services down immediately. I lost my website/blog again… *I am sorry for the inconvenience of the “Hello World”-message again.* I had a backup of my website, but these databases are my curse :(

What I actually wanted to post:

I did an illustration/poster for a little street-festival here in Cologne. As usual I like the simple use of black&white more than colors. The client wished for some colors though.

I was also in the Cologne zoo again. The visit always gives me a nice, smooth holiday feeling.
I like to draw bisons the most, although I don’t count it as one of my favorite, or best smelling animals.
It was a fun day with my friends Lidi, Oleg, Hannah and Stas.

Speaking of holidays: I was in holiday a few weeks ago. With my overseas-family (Conors dad, mum and sister Shannon ♥) and their friends. We visited, as it is obligatory for Americans, Vienna (Austria), Budapest (Hungary), the Champagne (France) and Brussels (Belgium). I liked bits and pieces of every destination: especially the Schönbrunn palace with the famous Sissi-Story. I have not watched the movies…

…but the story of her (Sissi on Wikipedia) is very dramatic and makes the whole visit in this castle even more exciting.

Worse a visit are the “Heurigen”-gardens. They serve wine of Vienna’s vintners, with excellent food, in wonderful fairytale gardens.

Budapest is a very, very cool city: beautiful, exciting and cheap. The fantastic restaurants, bars and views make up for a less culturally packed city as Vienna. The bars can be found in old ruins in the Jewish Quarter (ruin pub “Szimpla”) I have not been in any cooler bar than in Budapest. And again, everything is cheap.

Here is a little view of the Budapest princess, similar to the mermaid in Copenhagen. It has no strong meaning to it, but it is beautiful.

We bought some nice Champagne in the Champagne, of course. And we had some good Belgium bear in Brussels (and Comics en masse)

I have some new and fresh ideas, and after all this digital mess, I am happy to move on.
See ya.
Antje

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