Via Imperiale revisited

Experimenting with drawing with twigs and Indian ink, to achieve a more free style of drawing and painting. Based on a sketch I made earlier this year in Rome. I am not yet satisfied.

Staatsmijn Emma

When I was young there used to be a huge coalmine just a few 100 meters from my house. The "staatsmijn Emma" (the national coal mine Emma). It was named after one of our Queens.
The coalmine was one of the largest in the Netherlands, and it was closed around the mid-70s.
The drawing is based on old photographs and old memories.
Unfortunately there is nothing left, they tore down literally everything, and replaced the area with houses. Only us, the ones who grew up back then, can still see the scars. The bicyclepaths (once railroads), the wooded hills (once coalhills), the black earth (once cokesovens). They even tore down the original hyperbolic cooling towers - which were invented here. Well, you can see those all around the world, that would be the Emma offspring.

Failed glass vase

This should have been a beautiful vase. In frosted, sugar like semi-translucent light blue glass.
With yellow and red patterned bulbs sticking out.
Made in a difficult, elaborate and expensive glass fabrication method called "pâte de verre".

In a few pictures I can show you the procedure: first you make the model in clay, then you cast a mixture of gypsum and silicosis around, to produce the mold.
The second picture shows the mold, after two weeks of drying, and after I removed the clay model.
The third picture shows how to fill the mold: the holes are filled with fine-ground powder-like red and yellow glass, held together with wallpaper glue.
Then adding layers of sand like glassparticles, size about 1-2 mm. again bound  by glue. The total thickness is about 5-6mm, made in two layers.

As the glass would sink to the bottom when heated, I had to make an inner mold as well. In this case by adding pure loose gypsum in the middle, lightly compacted (picture 4). We had to wait a few weeks to have it dry again, and finally it went into the oven.

But..... it failed. The glass did not melt enough, the top ring was okay, but the lower parts fell apart when I removed the mold (picture 5).

Here you see the remnants of what should have been a lovely vase.
All that's left is a glass crown, which I show at the top. Just to show how it could have looked like.

MIG 21 in Maasbracht

I made a drawing of this old MIG 21 today. It's standing in the business park of a village called Maasbracht, some 30km away from where I live, at a car junk yard. No idea how it got there.
It was hidden from view by a line of trees. I had noticed it a few times last winter, when the trees were bare, but only today I found the time to draw it.

Schimmert watertower

Drawn this evening, the old watertower of Schimmert. It dates back to 1927, and was made in the style of "the Amsterdam school". You can see the waretower from 50km away, as it stands on top of one of the highest hills in Limburg (and obviously also the Netherlands).
I was waiting for concert evening with local choirs, my wife sings in one of them. She had to arrive early, so I had half an hour to spend before the visitors could enter. A beautiful summer evening with good music. That's summer.

I had this dream again...

Woke up this morning, with this dream in my head. It was about some robots tearing down a huge stack of houses, while a heavy church organ (up on the adjacent cliff) was playing some Olivier Messiaen music.
In my dream there were also a lot of spectators in front, all wearing Humphrey Bogart trenchcoats and hats, but that was too complicated to add to the drawing.
I know where the dream came from: a few days ago I reread the french 60s comic book by Philippe Druillet, called "Les 6 voyages de Lone Sloane", the third chapter "Rose". 
Anyone familiar with Druillet will notice that this drawing is totally different in style of course.

Volkswagen and Chevrolet Apache

Drawn at the same vintage car meeting as the previous one. I had more trouble with this one, as the paint would not dry as I wanted. The area is a bit damp, and it's always late in the evening.
I have to try other brand of colour, or use different paper. The other sketch worked better (and much faster).

Chevrolet Pickup 1954

I was at the weekly America Car meeting "Cruise in", in Brunssum this evening.
A lot of chances to draw old cars.
This is a quick sketch, of a Chevrolet Pickup 1954, a beauty. Took me about 10-15 minutes to make this one.

DJ Shadow

Just a drawing, after a picture in the newspaper of last Thursday (Volkskrant, 30-06-2016). In fact I have not read the article, but the picture by Derick Daily hit a string.
Today a fellow sketcher, Roger Klaassen, made a drawing after that picture, and I decided to do the same. Just for fun. Here is the link to Roger's blog: http://rogerklaassen.com/wordpress/blog.
 

Blue skies

Sometimes I have the privilege to make something extraordinary.
Our Tebodin office moved from Maastricht to Elsloo, in a far better and contemporary office building.
I did the interior design, and made a few round glass separation walls.
As the office lacked some colour, I designed this repetitive sky with a sketched local Limburg landscape, also with a hint to the work we do at our office.
I found the sky on Google images. But I still had to redesign 30% of the clouds, as they were not repetitive.
The sketch was made with fountain pen on a small  piece of paper, and resized 20 times or so.

It was printed on vinyl foil, and glued/pasted on the glass walls. When the sunlight is out, it shines through the foil, and the scene becomes very vivid.  


The size is 9 x 1,2 meters. The largest drawing I have made so far.....