‘Innovatie in Leiden’, from: 'De Ziel van Leiden' (2017).
Caspar ten Dam is a Dutch cartoonist and illustrator. He was one of the contributing artists to the local comic book 'De Ziel van Leiden' (2017).
Life and career
Caspar ten Dam was born in 1967 in Dordrecht. Through his mother's side of the family, he came from a line of (amateur) painters, including grandfather Gerrit Kloens Sr. (1900-1973) and uncles Bas Kloens (b. 1940) and Gerrit Kloens Jr. (1935 -2017). Caspar ten Dam's artistic talents came to notice during his high school days in Bilthoven and Zeist. During the 1980s, he spent half a year at a Zeist drawings school, but otherwise he's self-taught. His main influences are Hans G. Kresse, Marten Toonder and Robert van Gulik.
Professionally, Caspar ten Dam is a graduate in political science, who has worked as an analyst, advisor, editor, peer reviewer, bookseller and translator, since 2014 through his own CTDam Consultancy. On the side, he is a member of the DrawClub Leiden and has been doing illustration jobs, notably for the fantasy book trilogy 'De Schaduw van de Groene Berg' (2015-2017), written and self-published by his father Hans ten Dam under the Tasso imprint. As a cartoonist, he has worked with his father on cartoons about regression therapy, and for the Association for the Study of EthnoGeoPolitics, he created his cartoon series 'The Expert'. The latter cartoons were collected in the booklet 'The Expert: A Strange Academic World We Live In!' (EGxPress, 2018).
'The Expert' cartoon from 2015.
In 2017, Caspar ten Dam drew the chapter 'Innovatie in Leiden' in the local comic book 'De Ziel van Leiden', published by FutureManagement on the occasion of a research project for the "soul" and essence of the city of Leiden, initiated among other people by Robert van Oirschot and Nils Bierman. Among the other contributing comic artists were Eline W., Nicoline Heemskerk, Jonathan van Engelenhoven, Rooske Eerden and Abel van Oirschot.
Caspar ten Dam, drawing an 'Expert' cartoon at Leiden DrawClub (August 2016).