Inspiration case study: Claire Wendling

My second “inspiration case study” for Tom Froese’s ‘The Style Class: Work out your illustration style in a daily project’ is Claire Wendling. While Linnea Sterte is something like my latest crush, Wendling’s work has been inspiring me ever since I became aware of her – that is, at the beginning of the 1990s 😁️.

I remember finding her comic with Christophe Gibelin, ‘Les Lumières de l’Amalou’, in my favourite bookshop in Nancy. That bookshop was my little cozy, happy place in the big city (I’m from a village, allbeit a larger one) where I was suffering in the infamous French “classes préparatoires” (supposed to “prepare” you for the very selective exams that may admit you to study engineering).

I think it was the cover of volume 2 that drew my attention. In hindsight I wonder a bit about finding that comic so special, as it feels very timid in comparison with Wendling’s later work – though that changes already in volume 3 and 4. Their covers are part of the “inspiration collage” below, as well as some of my favourite panels.

Anyway, here’s some of what I like about Claire Wendling’s work! It was not so easy at first to pinpoint specific things, and therefore all the more interesting to do the exercise!

In general, I’m very grateful that researching for these case studies, a.k.a. foraging for hours in my comics collection 😁️, has allowed me to reconnect with my love of comics. Indeed when I started trying to get into children’s books I felt that it was a completely different world, that I had to learn from scratch (especially the German market, as I did not grow up with it). This impression was reinforced when I first showed my work at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in 2018, and received repeated feedback to maybe rather try comic publishers.

I was not really aware of it, but I think I have been rejecting my “comic past” since then 😌️.

But after doing these case studies, and all the research around them, I feel that I can very well build upon these (sometimes lifelong) influences, take what I like, what has informed my own style over the years, lean into it, and transfer it into another context. I had to think about what Andy J. Pizza calls the “guilty pleasures” part of your identity / style, and I guess that really made sense to me for the first time.

Maybe it’s also because in the meantime I’ve indeed learned a lot about the children’s book market. But anyway, I think now I feel a bit more confident that I may find my place within that market, without having to become someone else.

Comics are my “guilty pleasure” in the world of children’s books :)

Nevertheless, for the next case study I decided to find out things I like in the German children’s book market! The study will focus on illustrator Mareikje Vogler :)