Cartoonist/Maarten Wolterink
-In my family, my mother and my eldest brother had the ability to make nice pencil drawings. Later on my youngest brother went to the academy of arts and later even came to be a teacher of Typography over there. Both he and my sister had been educated to be painters (just walls and doors) but this education also had commercial drawing incorporated. Still, I was the ‘best’ in drawing, probably just because I did it a lot more as a kid and got credit for it. I became interested in cartoons through two occurrences. One, my study at the academy of arts came to a dead end because I was bad in abstract painting. Two, I developed a political view on international and national matters and I wanted to express that with drawings and have fun with it.
-In my childhood, comic books were lying around the house, there was even a subscription to a weekly magazine with all sorts of comics. Movies like ‘Once upon a time in the West’ and ‘ One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest made a huge impression on me. My favorite comic artist was Hermann, creator of the series Bernard Prince, Comanche and Jeremiah. Among Dutch cartoonists I was inspired by Peter van Straaten. He did short comics and both political cartoons as cartoons commentating on daily life (depicting it as a mostly tiresome existence).
-My academic study didn’t really get into comics but I did learn a lot over there. Not being afraid of large formats for example, using techniques other than just a pencil and mixing everything up and finally grasping the shape and movements of the human body whilst sketching models. The rest was learning by doing. You just work on (when there is work) and develop. Sometimes a big step is made by just using different materials. I went from paper to drawing pad, to drawing directly on the screen. But when I started doing the latter on an iPad my artistic education and vision suddenly burst out and changed my cartoon style radically.
