I am now retired

 

As of today I am officially retired as an architect. Even though I will still work a few days to finish an important job, the end of my professional life is at hand. 

I had a unforgettable retirement drink last wednesday, and my collegues gave me a few nice surprises. They assembled some 60 artist impressions that I made over the years, and sketches I made on my own building sites. Then changed them into postcards, and had my present and former collegues write a farewell notes on the back. Absolutely stunning. Some lasting memory!!

Tasja Cicak 25 years.

I made this surprise gift  for a dear collegue, Tasja Cicak. For 25 years she is a dear, enthousiast and valuable collegue. She was a redufee from Serajevo, 30 years ago, but totally managed to integrate into the Limburg society. Anyway, hard to see, but this Van Gogh impression of the Barcelona Sacarada Familia is 3 dimensional, made from papier maché and other stuff. WE collected money to sponsor a trip to Barcelona.

Brabanthallen

 After 2 years of Corona, symposia are getting organized again. This is one in Den Bosch in the "Brabanthallen", about fire safety and alarm systems. Managed to make a quick sketch.

Mars Wrigley in Veghel

 

Today this watercolour painting of  a microbiology laboratory was handed to our client, Mars-Wrigley  in Veghel.

This is not only my painting, but the building is also my design. I made the first sketches for this building back in 2018, the construction was finished a few months ago. 

Unfortunately I have not been able to visit the building due to Corona travel restrictions. I really hope to see the finished buidling in reality some time soon.

Eindhoven Botstraat

Lunchtime in our office in Eindhoven. Too cold to leave the office, so I will draw what I see through the office window.

Hotel lobby Rotterdam

Travels to Rotterdam. A sketch made in the restaurant of my hotel, while waiting for the dinner to arrive. I did the figure first. Then, after dinner, when the guy was gone, I added the chandelier and painting frame.

Elsloo, view from my office

View from my office window. I was just in time to make this. The last few days the trees in front of my window start getting leaves, and this view will be obscured until autumn. Not a great loss.

Mission foods in Moscow

This is what I do. I design factories, in this case a tortilla plant to be located in Stupino, Russia, 80 km south of Moscow. I made the design for the Mexican firm Mission foods, the largest or one of the largest producers of tortilla bread in the world.
Of course, the aim is to make a production plant, efficient and clean, compliant to all latest food regulations (you can fill a truck with those regulations....). Even so, I always try to give it some touch.
But sometimes you just have to let go.
The plant will be opened within a few weeks, and this is what the building looks like in reality.
Try and spot the 10 differences.... :)

Ebola vaccine and cure

An article in our newspaper, a few days ago.

Usually I can't disclose anything about the designs I make, due to secrecy agreements that I have to sign. I make most building and production line designs in very first stages of a project, and that is a period that the competition of our clients would be interested in any information they can get hold of.

Now the news about the Ebola vaccine is in the open, and I can proudly say that I did my contribution to the production line that will make this vaccine.
A nice thought around the Christmas days.

25 years on the job

I have been working for 25 years at Tebodin. Actually, the milestone was the past 1st of January, but for several reasons it was celebrated last Friday. We had a good 5 course dinner for my family and close colleagues, in Kolentip, Maasbracht.
I received some nice presents: a beautiful glass piece, made by Belmondo glaskunst, and a frame in which all my close colleagues made an sketch of me.
Of course some of them refer to things that happened over the years; never underestimate the memory of your close colleagues.....

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.....

Stahl, Waalwijk

I made the above watercolour for the opening ceremonies of a new plant for the firm Stahl. They make the highly specialized materials that look like leather and are used in car dashboards. Imagine what they have to endure!
The lab is very well designed (not by me, but by a colleague, Sjoerd Gort).
The painting was presented to the client a few weeks ago.
I only forgot to make a picture of the final result, this is the nearly finished version.

Building site

Sketch made on location, on a building supervised of our firm Tebodin, in Waalwijk, the Netherlands.
Building a test lab for car interior materials.

Victam

There are days that I am totally uninspired. I want to draw, but I just can't put my mind to it. I walk around with my sketchbook, but nothing seems to be interesting enough to draw.
Not that I am doing nothing, I recently made these sketches for a Tebodin presentation on Animal food Factories and their future developments. It will be presented during the Victam congress, in Cologne next week. I made the drawings (two on a A4) with a black pentel paintbrush, scanned them and coloured them with Gimp.
I'll have to do something to get out of this uninspiredness.

Feed design lab

I was asked to attend a symposium about animal food innovation, organized by "Feed design lab" and Tebodin/Bilfinger.
The reason I was there because I was asked to visualize the outcomes of the brainstorm session.
That was very hard to do, in fact it turned out to be practically impossible. The session took 45 minutes, and there were 7 groups. The groups would be on steam after 20 minutes, so I had only 25 minutes left: that means about 3 minutes per group. To listen, catch the essence, think about an image and sketch it.
In the end I managed 6 images.


As I had to work fast, I used markers. I had not used those since my studies in architecture, back in the 80s. Here is the testimage I made during the symposium. Just within a few minutes.

Goslar again

A business trip to Goslar (Germany) again. As it is early dark, and I was travelling with colleagues, I had no chance to go into town and make a drawing of the beautiful houses over there.
So what was left is this early morning view from my hotel room window. I made this in about 10 minutes, and added some touchups later that day in the car driving home (I was not driving).
I hope to be able to do better sketches next time.

Feed Design Lab Symposium.

What I do for a living.
Together with the dutch organisation "feed design lab", Tebodin organizes a symposium on animal and livestock nutrition. It will focus on the use of new technology, improved logistics and sustainability.

They asked me to illustrate the invitation to the symposium, cartoonwise. Here it is.

Brightlands

It must seem like I don't make any usual sketches any more; I only feature different stuff like exhibitions, digital art, travels, paintings etcetera.
Here is another event: today my largest work of "art" was presented at the opening of our new Tebodin office on the "Brightlands" office park in Geleen.
A lot of dark suits, speeches and drinks, then the presentation, an explanation and putting my name under the digital painting.

The basic idea was a "Bokeh" image of the chemical plant at Chemelot (Geleen).
I once drove by the plant on a dark moonlit evening with some ground mist, and the lights on the towers seemed to shimmer like alien eyes. I tried to capture that feeling.

The colours are the exact firm colours (nowadays Tebodin is part of the international Bilfinger group). The work was totally made digitally, using GIMP; the dimensions of the print measured 2 x 4,5 meters. That's why the final image in TIFF (resolution 300dpi) measured as much as 1.5GB....

 

A tiny remark: I was there to present the image, and didn't carry a camera. That's why the pictures don't show public :)

Chemicals

Another job at the chemical plant Chemelot. I passed this installation this morning, walking from a meeting to our site office. Just enough time for a quick one. Fountain pen ink washed out with water and adding a little colour.

At the office

Drawn at the office, last thursday.
A colleague.