As a kid, German author Line Hoven had two words to say to anyone who asked her what she wanted to become when she grew up: artist and writer.
“Not just an artist, or just a writer, but both,” she clarifies. Doodling was fun, but the challenge was to complement each picture with words. “It took some courage to use words along with illustrations,” she says, flipping the pages of her début graphic novel Liebe Schaut Weg (Love looks away), at the Goethe Institut. The novel bagged ICOM Independent Preis 2008 (Best Independent Comic).
Line is in India as part of Goethe-Institut’s Long Night of Literature in New Delhi, and has short tours planned to Kochi and Hyderabad, besides Chennai, which incidentally is the first city in her itinerary.
We meet on day one, and she is already full of stories about her first taste of dosa, sambar and filter coffee combo, the “crazy” traffic and “warm” people. “Another striking thing I saw was the number of puddles, on the way from the airport to my hotel (in Alwarpet). Every time our car ran over one, it created an arc of water. It was beautiful. I live in Hamburg which is a rainy city, but I never get to see anything like this,” she says, animatedly. There is a probability she might hold onto that visual until it becomes a part of one of her illustrations, she adds.
Conceptualisation apart, each work takes months to complete, given the technique she uses. “The scraperboard method involves scratching out white lines, surface areas and filigree textures on a black card. It’s an ancient technique, which few artists use now,” she says, handing a black card and a toothpick for us to try it out.
“I did not know about it until I joined Art School in Kassel, where I had my professor, an avant garde comic artist ATAK, tell me about it,” she says. Though Line was always inclined to charcoal-based work, discovering the scraperboard method opened a whole new world for her.
“My first graphic story was about how a cat and a fish become friends. The cat, which has a square head after swallowing a suitcase, pacifies the fish that accidentally swallows a soccer ball,” she says, with the excitement of a child. Today, she contributes to several magazines, does cover illustrations, short stories and standalone posters, which have been part of several exhibitions. Coming back to her first graphic novel, Line says that it’s a “personal and emotional story of her parents and grandparents, who come from the U.S. and Germany. The idea came up when I was asked to write a short story as part of an artists’ collective on the topic Science,” she recalls.
Line chose to tell the story of how her grandfather made his first science project: a radio. “I remember my grandfather tearing up when I played a (Felix) Mendelssohn piece on the piano. When he was a kid, he was not allowed to listen to the Jewish composer, as he was part of the Nazi movement. He built his own radio, but was not allowed to listen to any foreign music,” she says. The story moved Line, and she decided to narrate it using illustrations. While this forms one part of the book, there is another that narrates how her parents met at a blind date, back in the 60s.
As the pages flip, we realise that her mom’s parents were strict and controlling, so she found her new relationship as a gateway to freedom. And as a young adult, her dad liked to read science fiction comic books, but was not allowed to, as it was considered a ‘waste of time’ by the ‘cultured’ German families. “My dad, however, did manage to collect a shelf full of books. This, in a way, piqued my interest in comics right from a young age,” she says. “That apart, I like reading the classics — Jane Austen, Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens. I feel more attracted to that era,” she says. As it turns out, the scraperboard method is also from the early 1900s. It was used as a popular printmaking technique.
She continues, “My grandparents were disapproving of the relationship.” But despite the friction, Line’s parents had a happy wedding. “Now, when they Google their names, their love story pops out in five different languages: Polish, English, French, Italian and German,” she adds with a laugh.
