minesen How does a comic artist like Greta von Richthofen deal with the start of her one-year scholarship at the Meinersen Artists’ House of all times during the deepest lockdown of the corona pandemic? Very simple: She draws him.Bang!

 

Two walls in the 31-year-old's whitewashed studio speak volumes: there are notes, a timeline, a storyboard with rough sketches and finally the first finished pictures of a new story. The drawings show the artist's house, then she herself climbing the stairs with a hot drink in mid-April(trap! trap!), sits down at the table in her studio and ponders the beginning. "This will be my project here," says von Richthofen - a comic that takes place in Meinersen and is of course shaped by all her impressions and everyday observations. "Otherwise I like to draw in color, but for this one I chose black and white."doodle!

 

Corona had thrown their plans upside down. Because the artist, who was born in Vienna, actually had something else in mind: a story with a rhinoceros. Rooaaaar! "But I would have had to do research in museums for that," she says, maybe even have to go abroad- wooom! –everything is not possible. But their direction, realistic, documentary stories based on intensive research, are also possible in Meinersen without Nashorn. Here, the illustration and comics student in Hamburg and Kassel expected something completely new: "I didn't know so much nature and village life at all." And despite Corona, she finds it "very lively".ring, ring! squeak! slide!

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Comic artists are not commonplace in the Künstlerhaus, as artistic director Jochen Weise confirms. To be precise: Von Richthofen is the first. "Comics have developed into an artistic genre," he says, "we find it very exciting." That's why twelve art schools that also teach comics were specifically contacted this time for the call for entries.Tip, tipple tipple, tap! "We always advertise nationwide," says Andreas Schuster, the chairman of the sponsoring association. The four-person jury can always choose between 40 to 50 applicants, and suggest their favorites to the board. Von Richthofen then convinced in the interview.Clap clap clap!

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“Even as a small child I read and drew a lot,” she says. The enthusiasm for comics has always been there. "When I was 16 or 17, I discovered German independent authors. I thought to myself: I want to do that too.”Yeeeah!

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