'Haar Beschermengel' (Maxix #3, 2021).
Wouter Winter is a Dutch comic artist, also referred to as 2W. Beginning his artistic career in the field of advertising and animation, he has later been working as a comic artist and illustrator for magazines like Maxix, Bobo and the Disney comics magazine Donald Duck.
Early life
Wouter Winter was born in 1982 in Buinen, a small town in the province of Drenthe. Raised in Apeldoorn and Emmen, he has been living in the city of Groningen since 1999. Artistic talents have been in the family roots. His grandmother had been a student of the painter George Hendrik Breitner, and was later a drawing teacher. An uncle of his grandfather was the painter and graphic artist Gerard Johan Staller (1880-1956), known for his paintings of Jewish life in Amsterdam.
As a child, Winter enjoyed the comic magazine Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad, and was captivated by the Teleac TV course 'Strip & Cartoon Tekenen' (1992), hosted by Peter de Wit and Hanco Kolk. Through an uncle, he was introduced to more artistic and adult-oriented comics, such as the work of Moebius, Joost Swarte and Daniel Clowes. A meeting with the Dutch comic artist Henk Kuijpers made him realize he wanted to become a comic artist himself. A later influence of his work has been Gerard Leever's diary comic 'Gleevers Dagboek'.
In 2021, Wouter Winter told about his meeting with Henk Kuijpers in a comic story.
Working life
Fresh out of high school, Winter began his working life, initially working in factories and in construction. His spare time was largely dedicated to skateboarding. At the age of 27, his interest in comics was renewed after meeting John Onnes of the Akim comic store in Groningen. He became an avid collector again, and a frequent visitor of the Akim shop.
A couple of years later, he decided to fine tune his graphic skills, and attended fine art courses at the Classical Academy of Groningen. He also enrolled at online schools such as Schoolism en Watts Atelier, and followed an apprenticeship with the pre-production character and concept design studio Imaginism in Toronto, Canada. His career as a professional artist took off with doing storyboard art for advertisements and children's TV series. One of his main clients has been the Polish animation studio EgoFilms.
In 2022, Wouter Winter offered his services to the editors of Donald Duck and Tina in an original comic format. Comiclopedia editor Bas Schuddeboom has a cameo in the second panel.
Comics
In 2016, Winter self-published his mini-comic 'Hello, Big Fist'. It took another five years before he made his official debut in the May 2021 issue of the Belgian comic magazine Maxix. For this magazine, he made several short stories from scripts by Dirk de Graef. He has also contributed stories to the Groningen underground comic magazine GR'NN. Since 2023, he began drawing comic stories with Disney characters for the Dutch Donald Duck weekly, and in the following year, he became an artist for the pre-school magazine Bobo. Since 2024, Winter has also been making illustrations for the cult movie magazine Schokkend Nieuws.
'Donald Duck', published in Donald Duck #4, 18 January 2024. © Disney.
Teaming up with cartoonist Dim Junius, Wouter Winter has been giving cartooning workshops in the Groningen region. The two men have also collaborated on the comic strip 'The No Foes', with which they participated in the Stripbattle of Jump magazine in early 2025. Since 2022 Winter, Junius and fellow comic artist Jan-Willem Spakman (Wimpie Comics) have been making the 'Breedbeeld' YouTube series, in which they explore and discuss comics and artwork.
Illustration for Bobo magazine (2025).