I had the great honor to be reviewed in the Comic Journal by Rob Clough. Yay. //

Ich hatte die Ehre auf der sehr tollen The Comic Journal-Webseite zu erscheinen. Rob Clough hat eine Kritik über meinen Comic “Neighbourhood Conversations at Flower Beds and Fire Hydrants” geschrieben.

Besides I am currently working on a child book project with a very popular publisher here in Germany. It is a lot of fun, but I am not sure, how much I can say or show.

// Außerdem arbeite ich gerade an einem Kinderbuch bei einem renommierten Verlag hier in Deutschland. Es macht sehr viel Spaß, ich weiß aber nicht wie viel ich sagen oder zeigen kann.

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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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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