Margreet de Heer's Blog, page 13

The Resonating Brain

In July, I went to Oxford Summer School and attended a course about the human brain – it still resonates with me, and somehow, consciously or subconsciously, these “brain”-drawings keep popping up in the comics I made since.

For magazine Open Deur I did an illustration about music – including the route musical sensation takes throughout our brain…

I also made another comic about Stella for magazine Hoe Overleef Ik - and lo and behold: all of a sudden we’re inside her brain as well!

Meanwhile I’m...

Science: the Tour!

Science: a Discovery in Comics has officially hit the stores and it’s time to officially promote it, with an official Promotional Tour! Margreet and Yiri are coming to the USA, and here are the dates and places:

September 14-15: SPX, Washington, table G1-2 (NBM Publishing)

September 22: the Brooklyn Book Festival, NBM Publishing booth

September 25: the Million Year Picnic, Cambridge – book signing

September 27: Bergen St. Comics, Brooklyn, NY – book signing & bubbly!

Margreet will be available for...

Meeting Neil Gaiman

Readers of my blog will know that I’m a big fan of writer Neil Gaiman – from his Sandman in the nineties, which was a huge influence in my decision to try to make the leap into a life in comics, to hisCalendar of Tales last Spring, on which I collaborated; and now there’s his new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane, for which he’s making a grand final Signing Tour. Yesterday, he was in a bookstore in Rotterdam, and my husband and I went there to listen to him being interviewed and have our...

Publication, publication, publication!

Yes, that’s THREE publications of my work that are coming out this month! The first is of course Science: a Discovery in Comics which is available now (even though the official presentation date is in September, when I’ll be in the US at the SPX festival to sign and celebrate) – I got my copies in yesterday so I know now that it’s REAL! The publication is beautiful again, thank you NBM! I love the hardcover, and the endsheets – and this is the first official publication that’s lettered with m...

Bits of Brain

When on holiday in Christ Church, Oxford, I attended the course ‘Human Memory and the Brain’, tutored by professor Gillie McNeill, who did an excellent job in making the subject matter both digestible and enjoyable. I drew a whole bunch of cartoons during class – something I would be chided for in high school but which is encouraged now, fortunately!

When we memorize things, for example a telephone number, our brain can use a variety of strategies.

It may visualize the thing it wants to remembe...

Holiday Pictures

My husband and I have returned from a wonderful two weeks in Oxford, England. We took part in the Oxford Experience, a summer school program based in Christ Church, one of Oxford’s most famous colleges.

The buildings are probably best known for the movies that were (partly) shot here, such as Brideshead Revisited, The Golden Compass and the first three Harry Potter movies. Especially the awesome sixteenth century staircase leading up to Hall is a great location, and I tried this year to catch...

Science: the Middle Ages in 3 1/2 minutes (or 2 pages)

I love drawing timelines. It’s a real challenge to bring down certain periods of time down to their historic essentials in a way that’s entertaining as well as educational. In my new book Science: a Discovery in Comics, I included several spreads with illustrated timelines. In a previous blog post I already showed the one for the History of the Earth – another one, on pages 58-59 of the book, is the timeline for the scientific development during the Middle Ages.

In recent weeks I’ve been exper...

It’s Only Science!

It’s now less than two months to go before my book Science: a Discovery in Comics will be in stores! To whet your appetites, here’s a bit of a proto-science-comic I made for newspaper Trouw in 2009, for its philosophy section. Philosophy of Science has always been my interest, and here I had the opportunity to comment on the annoying habit of using scientific arguments to diminish the wondrous diversity of reality:

The kind of science I’m commenting on in this comic is actually science working...

Socrates and the Three Sieves

I’m experimenting with animating bits of my comic books. This is a movie I made of the anecdote of Socrates and the Three Sieves, as drawn in Philosophy: a Discovery in Comics – click on the picture to see it move on YouTube:

Pictures in the Sand

Last week I visited the island of Terschelling, where the annualOerol festival took place, full of art, theater and music. The festival turns the whole island into a stage, or canvas – and it invited me to draw these pictures on the beach:

Then I was joined by a couple of kids, who made these amazing creatures:

Our gracious host Mathilde de Graaff photographs a Yiri of sand: